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Business communications too often play to one side of the brain and ignore the other. If the message focuses exclusively on numbers and logic the left brain is feasting and the right is fasting. Conversely, some Super Bowl ads go to such lengths to entertain that you don’t know which product is being promoted until the logo flashes.
Always strive for balance. For example, when I wrote a sales brochure for a medical billing company, I spoke to the target market (healthcare professionals) in their own language:
“The modern healthcare revenue cycle is like a living organism: if one part of a system performs poorly, the patient suffers. Your practice suffers when you do not capture, present and collect patient service revenue, the lifeblood of your business. Our role in your practice’s financial health is medical billing, coding and receivable management. We tend to the financial health of your practice so that you can focus on the health of your patients.“
Of course we highlighted 28% fewer claim rejections with my client’s services. Of course we cited a New England Journal of Medicine statistic about billing accounting for 43.7% of gross income and other critical, left-brained facts. The point I’m making here is about balance. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes more overt, but always necessary.
Finally, we designed the brochure in black, white and red, using red for headlines and to emphasize key words. The color red ties to the “lifeblood” language and also the unspoken concern that every business person has about hemorraging money (a hemorrage being red), and red ink.
Takeaways:
- Use your audience’s language to make your points
- Speak to the implied concerns of your audience as I did in the final sentence (most healthcare professionals don’t want to be businesspeople)
- Use color to your advantage
