No one is probably ever going to say, “I’m giving you my money because that one-pager was amazing!” But a poorly written marketing asset that leaves everyone thinking “Why should I care?” will stop people from buying. It even might sour them on your company for long time.
Show off the best of your brand and communicate the value of your solutions with a simple and powerful one-pager.
What is a marketing one-pager?
Originally called a one-pager because all the info fits on one page (a normal sheet of paper), this asset gives potential customers an easily digestible overview of what you sell and why it matters to them. While most people aren’t printing and delivering physical one-pagers anymore, it’s still best to keep this asset short and to the point.
One-pagers focus primarily on the “why.” Why should someone buy from you? What problems will you solve and what value do they get from paying you to help solve them?
The secondary purpose is to highlight a little bit of the “what” and “how.” What features and options set you apart? How will you deliver on the supposed value?
How to design a marketing one-pager
An effective one-pager is easy to follow and gets straight to the point. It keeps people engaged and out of the weeds. You just need people wanting to know more.
A one-pager is not a challenge for how much text you can include on a single page.
It’s not a place to share an extensive list of all your features either.
Clearly break up each section and keep all paragraphs short. White space is your friend! Along with that, take advantage of icons, photos, or other graphics to help convey your points and keep people’s attention.
Here’s a basic outline of the elements to include as you plan your one-pager.
Elements to have at the top of your one-pager
Company name and/or logo: People need to know who you are. Make sure you identify your company near the top.
Pain points: People need to know in the first moments of reading that this document is for them. When they identify with what you say, they keep reading.
Solutions: Just as you present the problems, present the solution. Make it clear you know the way to make those pains go away. But remember: This isn’t a feature dump. People care about results, not features.
Elements to include in the middle of your one-pager
Benefits: The “body” of the one-pager focuses on your value to the buyer. If someone chooses your solution, what great things will happen?
The benefits you include on each one-pager should reflect the audience viewing it. Prospects from different industries will respond better to different benefits. Don’t hesitate to create personalized assets to appeal to different audiences.
Features: I’ll repeat this again: Do not feature dump. Just sharing features won’t get you anywhere. That being said, you do want to set yourself apart from competitors. People need a glimpse into the “how” but not a complete walkthrough.
Take Skipio’s own one-pager for our team solution. One of the most popular features is the team dashboard. For clients like JobNimbus, it’s absolutely critical for tracking message KPIs that directly influence revenue. Because this feature solves multiple problems that sales managers face and other text messaging platforms don’t offer the transparency and visibility that our dashboard does, of course we want to mention it.
So, introduce and talk about features in the context of value and benefits. Show people what they’re missing out on. Similar to the benefits you include, vary the features you mention to appeal to your different audiences.
Elements for the bottom of your one-pager
Social proof: Though not a necessity, a bit of social credibility goes a long way. Including short customer quotes, a “credibility bar” with customer logos, or something similar helps boost your reputation. Customize your one-pagers to include social proof relevant to the prospects looking at it (even if the rest of the sheet is exactly the same).
Call to Action: Give people a singular task to do after they finish reading. Common CTAs encourage readers to:
- Schedule a consultation
- Sign up for a free trial
- Visit a landing page
- Watch a demo video
Whatever it is, ask them to do ONE THING and make it simple to accomplish. Including multiple CTAs causes confusion and prevents people from acting. The more burdensome your request, the more likely people are to ignore it as well. Don’t send anyone on a wild goose chase in the name of engagement.
Contact information: Give people an easy way to contact you and ask questions. Our one-pagers at Skipio have included text-in keywords, direct email addresses, and social media handles. We always make it clear that people can and should text us.
Tools to create your company’s one-pager
The first resource you need to create an effective one-pager is a solid value proposition. A well researched and detailed value prop makes the one-pager creation process a lot easier. It has all the info about your solution already, so use it to create your content and then focus on design.
Next, review your brand style guide. Make sure you know what types of photos, graphics, and fonts are acceptable to use and in what ways. Especially if you’re a smaller company, clearly branded marketing assets can make you look bigger than you are.
When it comes to design, there are plenty of design apps and templates available, many for free. For teams that don’t have an in-house graphic designer or aren’t interested in hiring out the project, check out apps like Canva and Adobe Spark. They offer everything you need to quickly customize a one-pager.
Get stock photos and icons from free resources like Unsplash, Pixabay, and Iconfinder. Or take advantage of Adobe Stock if you already have an Adobe subscription.
If nothing, including simplified product shots is a viable option. It might not be the most interesting at times, but you can still get your point across.
Tracking effectiveness of one-pagers
A simple, clear CTA makes it easier to measure the effectiveness of the one-pager. If you can directly attribute someone’s action or engagement to seeing the one-pager, that’s a big deal! For example, if you include a unique scheduling link and you set multiple appointments from that link, that’s great news.
Of course not every fulfilled action automatically means they had a good experience with the one-pager. And since it’s most likely you’ll be sharing a PDF of your one-pager, tracking its effectiveness isn’t necessarily straightforward. Look out for these clear signs to help you figure out how things are going.
If people come back to you with a lot of questions, and not probing questions about learning more or giving you money, your one-pager isn’t as clear as you need it to be. If people come back to you excited and eager to move forward, the document has done its job.
Similarly, if people never reach out again or continually rebuff sales follow-up, clearly you’re not giving them the right info. Or maybe you have the right info but the wrong people are seeing it. Either way, you need to resolve the disconnect. Rewrite and redesign as needed or change up how you’re generating leads.
If you host the one-pager on a landing page or share it through email or even text messaging, you should be able to track things like visits and open rates to some extent. When using Skipio to send a link to the PDF, you can easily automate your follow-up and track response rates.
When hosting the asset on a landing page, you may also want to A/B test different versions. Simple variables to test include the headline, CTA, or images. Just make sure you’ll be delivering it to enough people to actually evaluate what’s most successful.
Most important of all, keep marketing and sales aligned
All marketing one-pagers that you create should feel like an extension of your website, lead nurturing strategy, and sales pitches. The clearer your alignment from initial marketing to closed deal, the faster people will commit and the more likely they are to stick around. People notice when you give them a cohesive buying experience.
Keeping up with this alignment means consistently iterating on your ideas. Create your first one-pager and then see how the sales team uses it. Take notes on what people like and what they don’t. Know what instigates responses and what gets reps ghosted.
After making any changes, alert everyone else from sales and marketing. When your teams stay on the same page, growth happens.