Business-to-Business Printed Sales Materials

Business-to-Business Printed Sales Materials

Hard Copy Communication

Although digital communication has many advantages, printed materials are still widely used for two main reasons:

As with all sales and marketing materials, they must clearly and plainly answer the most important questions your prospects are likely to ask you or your sales people. And the time to start answering those questions is the very second your prospect looks at your marketing materials. With print collateral, that means headlines that immediately establish in specific terms exactly how your prospect can benefit by reading further.

Calgary business-to-business (B2B) print marketing, print copywriting, print design examples

In a business-to-business environment, your prospects are far too busy to decipher cute headlines or attempt to extract the meaning from a metaphorical graphic. You’ll be far better off just giving your prospects what they want. The plain facts about your product, presented in a manner that encourages them to include you in their buying process.

Look at the sample brochures on the right. You won’t see much in the way of clever slogans, double entendres or metaphorical graphics. Just plain language that’s lets prospects know what’s in it for them if they open a dialogue with the seller. This is the approach that Claude Hopkins, who wrote the book Scientific Advertising a hundred years ago, called “salesmanship in print”.

Salesmanship In Print

Salesmanship starts with using plainly-stated benefits that respond to the basic needs of your prospects in your market.

Consider which of these three headlines for a fictitious battery called “MaxPower” would best get a prospect’s attention:

Power To The Max With MaxPower!

MaxPower – The Longest Lasting Batteries on the Market!

Reduce Your Downtime by 27 Percent!


Power To The Max With MaxPower!

This approach is used frequently by advertising agencies. It’s an attempt at using clever phrasing to create a memorable impression. In the B2B world that methodology is usually ineffective no matter how cleverly written because it’s immediately recognized as marketing fluff and there is little incentive for the prospect to read further.


MaxPower – The Longest Lasting Batteries on the Market!

This is another frequently used approach. The headline hints at benefits to the prospect, but the focus is still on the product and how wonderful it is. To be effective, the focus of marketing communications must always be on the prospect and solving the prospect’s problems.


Reduce Your Downtime by 27 Percent!

This is by far the most effective way to reach busy prospects. Plain, clearly stated information that’s focused on benefits for the prospect. This is the kind of approach used by a sales person meeting a prospect or customer face-to-face, and should be the approach you adopt in all your marketing communications. Of course, the rest of the copy must carry through with this theme, always keeping the focus on the prospect.



Being Concise

People are only willing to digest a certain amount of information. We recommend printed sales materials be kept to a maximum of four pages. If you’ve got 12 pages worth of information, create three separate brochures. This obviously doesn’t apply to catalogues or other information vehicles. But if you’re trying to engage a B2B prospect in a sales conversation, keep your side of the conversation as short as possible.

Need some thought starters?

See above for a free B2B Marketing Copy Developer that will help you identify what to emphasize in your print and other marketing materials.

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Request a free B2B marketing copy developer.

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