All businesses are not created equal.

Running a service-based business and running a product-based business are two totally different beasts. You could buy a product from a business without even knowing who the owner is.

But before offering your services to your customers, you have to build relationships with them. And guess what’s the best way to build a relationship?

Writing.

Business writing is the most underestimated form of communication in a business. It’s the bridge between you and your target audience. If your writing is unclear, so is your communication with your audience.

And that poor communication can cause other negative effects throughout your business. How? Let’s find out.

Wasted Time

Bad business writing is more than just obvious typos and grammatical errors. The content that you write about is just as important as your grammar.

What would be some examples of bad writing?

• Ideas that are vague.
• Complicated sentences.
• Boring, dispassionate phrases.  
• Cliché writing.
• Inconsistent tone.

Let’s say that you are a business that sells CRM software to a law firm. You want to explain how your software benefits the law firm in a white paper.

Instead of getting to the point, you write in overly complicated sentences with jargon that you clearly don’t use. As a result, the legal operations manager throws your white paper away.

Now you’ve wasted your time and the law firm’s time. All because you wanted to sound articulate instead of getting to the point.

And guess what other resource was wasted? Your productivity.

Reduced Productivity

Let’s use another example. You’re a copywriter who is the owner of a virtual copywriting agency.

Within this agency, there are several freelance workers who perform different tasks. To define everyone’s roles and responsibilities, you create standard operating procedures (SOPs).

But instead of eliminating confusion, the document enhances it.

There are unclear instructions. The copywriters don’t know who’s responsible for what.

The editors don’t have specific editing guidelines. There’s no clear posting schedule for social media managers.

Everyone’s taking more time out of their day to ask you for clarification.

Guess what confusion breeds? Negativity and lack of productivity.

Now all of your freelancers are irritated and don’t care about the quality of the work.

As a result, your effectiveness is put in jeopardy – all because of a poorly written document.

Lost Sales

Writers don’t just assist with a business’s technical documents.

They assist with different marketing materials like:

• Website copy
• Ads
• Product descriptions
• Blog posts
• FAQ pages
• Articles
• White papers
• eBooks.

If any of these marketing materials commit the ultimate sin – being useless to your audience – it results in lost sales. You want written copy that addresses your customers’ needs, not make them hesitant to do business with you.

Copywriters and content writers know how to tailor content to specific audiences. Without this skill, you’ll find your content ignored by your target audience.

You can also gain the next negative effect: a bad reputation.

Negative Reputation

Customers today won’t hesitate to tell you when you’re messing up. And that absolutely goes for your written material.

We all can think of one time where there was a typo on a business’s social media post. The first thing going through your mind is, “Wasn’t someone supposed to proofread this before posting it?”

Now you’re making some assumptions about that business. Either they don’t have enough staff to assist with proofreading content, they rushed the post out themselves or they just don’t care enough to look professional.

All things you don’t want them thinking about your business.

You also lose credibility with your customers. You use your written content to build genuine relationships and communicate ideas to your audience.

Struggling in that department can cause your customers to lose trust in you. They may feel uncertain about your ability to actually help them.

And one thing you don’t want to be is a question mark to your customers.

You want to automatically pop up in their minds when they think about solving their problems.

Being on Cleanup Patrol

Last but not least, poor business writing leads to additional time correcting mistakes.

Like a thief in the night, poor business writing can steal time from your business.

No matter the industry, the general procedure for writing a blog post includes:

• Conducting market research for the target audience
• Researching the audience’s commonly used keywords and search intent.
• Drafting the blog post.
• Editing the blog post to follow SEO guidelines.
• Scheduling the blog post for publishing.

No matter how careful you think you are, something is going to go unchecked throughout the process.

Now you notice the error – but it’s after the blog post has been published. Guess what you have to do now?

Spend time fixing the mistake.

If that happens once, fine. But you can’t afford to correct mistakes two or three times a week.

That’s time you’re taking away from other areas in your business.

You’re going from being the CEO to the janitor every time it’s time to post your written content. And that causes frustration.

Final Thoughts

As you can see, there’s so much power in business writing. It can help you effectively communicate with your audience, establish clarity between you and your employees, and generate sales.

That’s why you don’t want to treat it as an afterthought.

If you want to improve your business writing, click here to schedule a consultation.

Share your thoughts in the comments section below.