If you’re like most Internet Marketers you use bullet points in your marketing copy whether it’s on your landing pages, in your emails, your newsletter sign-up pages, your lead generation pages, or just about everywhere else. You probably also use bullet points because you either want to break up the visual appearance (i.e. monotony) of the page; draw attention to certain features, benefits, or ideas; or want to aid in influencing those who are skimming or scanning your page to take an action. 

Are you truly planning, writing, and using bullet points in a manner that will allow you to receive the most benefits from them?

Bullet points perform well because they allow you to clearly and concisely put the most important and powerful pieces of information that you the marketer want noticed directly in front of your target. And since we know that the majority of visitors to your page won’t read a page in its entirety and usually will either be first looking to see if the copy is of interest to them by skimming or scanning the page to see if the page answers their question or solves their problem that brought them to the page in the first place.

A great set of perfectly written and properly used bullet points should ultimately aid you in influencing the website visitor to either go back and re-read the entire page (or read a higher percentage of the page than they normally would read) or even better, as a marketer selling a product, idea, or subscription, it can help in influencing them to positively respond to the call-to-action you have presented them with such as a purchase, sign-up, contact, download, etc.

The 4 Basic Marketing Bullet Point Tips that Get Results:

• Line lengths should be balanced and proportionate between each of the bullet points. It’s easier for your visitor to read them if there is symmetry in presentation between each point – i.e. 1 line each, 2 lines each, 3 lines each and so on.

 

• Complete sentences not required. When writing copy for each bullet point, think of each bullet point as an individual headline used to draw interest to aid in the influence or persuasion of that pages goal.

 

• Do not mistakenly organize bullet points in simple order of importance from top down. Studies show that your readers’ eyes see the first two bullet points, ignore the middle bullets, and then go on to see the last bullet point in your list. Organize as such.

 

• Place keywords and keyword phrases of major points first in each bullet’s copy. Start each bullet point with a different word. Using different and major keywords helps to differentiate each point, breaking monotony when scanning; increasing influence.

It also matters what content you choose to write copy for in your bullet points that in combination with the above rules determines their success. If your marketing a car,and you choose to present bullet points on the color of the hidden electrical wires, or that the bottom of your floor mats stick better than your competitors, you probably wont have as much success as bullet points that state the 50 miles per gallon that the car gets, or that it can go 0-60 mph in 3.4 seconds.

For me, I find it easiest to write out bullet points off the top of my head to get the ideas flowing in a manner similar to a brainstorming session. Then, I rework them to fit into the above 4 rules while simultaneously tightening them up for maximum performance and impact such as removing unnecessary words.