Role of Technical Communication in Marketing

Summary

Technical Writing is used in many different ways. In my research I found that people believe Technical Writing is used in Marketing by using brochures and allowing potential buyers a chance to see what the company is about. Other people believe that Technical Writing is used on the selling end. Trying to sell a potential customer on what the product is about and how it better than their competitors.

Interview

I reached out to a few marketing firms and only got one response back. Michael Quinlin of Mass Office of Travel and Tourism wrote back and said they did not use Technical Writing. Unfortunately for me I ran out of time to hear back from other firms and waited as long as I could for responses. I would have been really interested to see how companies around me use Technical Writing in Marketing.

Library Research

According to Janice King in Marketing Writing for Technical Products the most common use of Technical Writing in Marketing is brochures. A corporate overview is what comes to mind when Janice King thinks of brochures. One of the more important brochures is the corporate overview shows the product line of the company. It is the most important pieces of information of the company, varying from the company’s mission to who works for the company.

King describes that the length of the brochures can be anywhere from an index card to a book. One of the more intriguing pieces of information King gave about brochures was this, “The length should be as long as you need to present your information well give the brochure’s purpose, audience, and target environment. Production costs and anticipated life span can also be influencing factors on a brochure’s length.” To see that a company could either have an index card to describe their company or an entire book describing their company was amazing. A smaller company will have less information about themselves and a larger company could have an entire book about themselves was very interesting to me. Being able to realize that a company could have all of the information about their company on 13 lines of an index card was very intriguing to me. Knowing all of the information about a marketing company in a few sentences is one the reasons I would like to work for a small marketing company.

The most important information on brochures are Prospects, Sales Representatives, Dealers and Resellers. Prospects are people who are going to be buying your products. Business to business is very important in creating material that will attract a lot of companies. Sales representatives are one of the most important parts of your company. Having people who know your product and are motivated to sell your product is very important. Having a sales staff that are know the product is important because they are the ones who will be getting the company offers to buy the product and will in turn help grow the company. Dealers and resellers are the ones who will be face to face with potential customers. They will be using the brochures that the company gives them, and they will need to understand the brochure so they can be able to sell your product more easily.

This article by Janice King could be very useful for students trying to understand how Technical Writing is used in Marketing. Being able to see that brochures will tell the prospects what the company does and who they are. Brochure’s according to King are the most important piece of Technical Writing in Marketing and with her article easy to understand it will be very useful to students to see that brochures are not always a short description of the company but can be an entire book of who the company is and what they do.

According to Roger W. Brucker in The Buyer Problem and Audience Analysis, the most important use of Technical Writing in Marketing focuses on the prospective buyer’s problem. A great quote from the article told me the most information I need, “No amount of creative cleverness will work better than naming the problem your product will fix.” This told me that if I need to write about how to fix something, I do not need to create a catchy title, I should make the title exactly what I am fixing. Most people will search for a fix of a specific thing, if I create a catchy title for the fix it may not be found, if I create the title exactly what I am fixing then it will come up when it is searched and will get more clicks and it will be seen more.

This stuck out to me because he gives a seven-step process on how Technical Writing is used in Marketing. Brucker states clearly what each step is for, it answers all of the questions I had going into this assignment. How is Technical Writing used in Marketing? After reading through all of the steps, I now understand that it is used for answering any questions a potential customer has before deciding to buy the product. This checklist is very useful for students looking to see how Technical Writing is used in Marketing, this is exactly what you are looking for.

Brucker believes that explanation is key. Explaining how something specific that may look like a disadvantage without an explanation is actually an advantage. If you do not explain how it is an advantage you may have lost a sale because you did not explain that the specific feature is actually an advantage. Many marketing writers believe that the consumer knows about the product when it’s the exact opposite. A lot of the consumers know very little if anything about the product they are buying. Brucker believes that you should be writing to the people who do not know anything about the product.

Students who were looking into how Technical Writing is used in Marketing this article by Brucker is a great piece of information to use. He believes that the most important piece of Technical Writing is used by focusing on the prospective buyer’s problem. He goes on to explain that most marketing writing does not focus on the seller’s problem. Focusing on this niche of people will help you better understand buyers.

Audience People who drink Soda People Who Eat Fast Food Athletes, Adventure Seekers, people looking to catch video of what they are doing. Purpose To increase their consumer size and personalize their bottles. They are focused on people buying their bottle, so they get their name on a bottle or someone they know name on the bottle. To show what it inside of McDonald’s burgers, to have more people trust them because they are telling you what is inside burgers To attract new customers on their quality of their new Hero4. Also, to get customers who have older versions of the Hero to buy the new Hero4 base the camera quality.

Conclusion

This assignment was very helpful for me learning how Technical Writing is used in Marketing. It was interesting to see that Brucker and King had different beliefs of how Technical Writing is used in Marketing. That showed me that different people have different beliefs even within the same field. I didn’t think that people would have such different beliefs in how Technical Writing is used.