With compliance regulations to meet and technical subjects to explore, financial copywriting treads a fine line between informative and uninteresting. However, the industry is undergoing something of a makeover, with firms – and especially banks – becoming much more engaging and human. We’ve put together some tips on how to craft messages that can showcase a complex product or service in a more exciting way.
Break up your copy
Walls of text can be daunting, especially when they’re made from sentences that take more than a glance to fully understand. Think about whether a paragraph can actually become a simple bullet point list to make complex passages easier to digest.
Think easy
‘Delinquency’, ‘draw down’ and ‘instruments’ are just three terms that may be either unfamiliar or misleading to people outside the financial world. But they can all be replaced by a commonplace alternative just by thinking about the easiest way to express the meaning. Keep this in mind whenever you write to help your audience grasp a difficult topic.
Speak directly to your reader
You’ll see this tip on any blog related to good copywriting practice, but as it can make such a difference to financial writing it deserves a mention here. Even if the goal of a technical piece is to inform the reader, engaging them directly will help you hold their attention from the first word to the last.
Sidestep jargon
Again, avoiding jargon is good copywriting 101, but it’s particularly important when it comes to financial topics. The knowledge you have on a subject isn’t necessarily shared by the reader, so try to break it down into plain English without cutting out any necessary details.
Use humour
Humour isn’t often used in financial copy, which can make it very persuasive if used appropriately. Remember to think about the brand and the subject matter before using it though – fraud is no laughing matter.
What tips do you have to make financial copy – or any other specialist subject – more inviting and effective? Feel free to share them with us and our readers in the comments below or tweet us @strattoncraig.
How to make financial copy more captivating
