In this article
You don't need a framework to make most marketing better. You need one question, asked honestly of every page, email, pitch and post: what does the person on the other side need to think, feel or do next, and have we made that the easiest thing in front of them?
It works the same for every kind of organisation. The examples below come from a law firm, a kitchen showroom, a public body, a recruiter and a healthcare provider.
Where most marketing fails it
It sounds simple. It is ruthless in practice, because so much marketing fails it. The homepage that talks about the company instead of the reader's problem fails it. The email with three competing asks fails it. The brochure that lists features the buyer never wanted fails it. So does the charity appeal that opens with the organisation's history rather than the need, and the public notice that explains the rules but never says what to do.
Hold anything up to the question and its weaknesses show at once.
What does the person need to think, feel or do next, and have we made that the easiest thing on the page?
Why marketing gets written from the inside
Most weak marketing is weak because it was written from the inside: what we want to say, in the order it occurred to us. That is rarely carelessness. The people writing it know the organisation best, and that is exactly the problem. Once you know something well, it is very hard to imagine not knowing it. It even has a name, the curse of knowledge, and every organisation has it about itself.
The question forces you out of your own head and into the reader's. It flips the frame to the only one that matters: the person receiving it, their next step, their effort. Everything that does not serve that becomes visibly removable.
Four parts, four different faults
The question has three verbs and a test. Each catches a different fault, so ask all of it, not just the part you already feel good about.
| Part | Ask yourself | What failing it looks like |
|---|---|---|
| Think | What must they understand or believe by the end? | Everything we could say, none of it ranked |
| Feel | What doubt has to be settled? | Claims with no proof, or a tone that talks down |
| Do | What is the one next step? | Three competing asks, or none at all |
| Easiest | Is that step the least effort option in front of them? | A long form, a buried button, a step nobody asked for |
Think: what they need to take away
Anthony Collins Solicitors publish a social impact report every year, to show the difference they make as a social purpose law firm. They asked us to help them move from a lengthy printed report to a digital one. Their impact is considerable, but they did not want to come across as imperious. The report had to work for everyone from private clients to corporates and local authorities, and feel friendly while staying professional.
So the job was to decide what each of those readers should take away, then say it plainly. The interactive report we made uses short, punchy messages and statistics that can be taken in at a glance, with animated infographics for the key findings and film and photography of the real people the firm has helped. The phone at the top of this article shows one page of it. See the Anthony Collins work, or more on infographics and reports.
Feel: what doubt has to be settled
Feelings are not a soft extra. Often the thing standing between a reader and the next step is a worry nobody has addressed.
Anglia Interiors has designed, supplied and fitted kitchens, bedrooms and home offices from its Huntingdon showroom since 1974. A fitted kitchen is bought on trust. People want to see the rooms, meet the people and know the business will still be there afterwards. So the website we designed and built for Anglia is led by their own photographs and films. Every photograph is a real installation or a range on the showroom floor. The films we made, shot in the showroom and in customers' own kitchens, talk through the choices every buyer faces: doors, handles, worktops, lighting. The reassurance comes from proof, not adjectives.
Do: the one next step
Plenty of marketing leaves people informed, even moved, and then stranded.
When the Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority and three corporate partners wanted a film on modern-day slavery in the workplace, to raise awareness across UK business, we started by looking at what already existed. Most films talked about the signs of slavery. Very few said what you should do once you had decided to take the next step, while keeping everyone involved safe. That gap became the starting point for our creative concept. More on film and animation.
Easiest: take the effort out
The last part is the one most often skipped. Knowing the next step is not enough if taking it is hard work.
Staffline, the largest provider of blue collar recruitment in the UK, was finding it harder and harder to source candidates. They asked for a website and job search built around the candidate rather than the client. Our analysis found candidates struggling to find jobs through search engines, then struggling to apply even when they did. So the rebuilt site is job search heavy and mobile first, and we streamlined registration and application so that applying took far less time. See the Staffline work.
You cannot answer it from your desk
The question is easy to answer badly. A room full of people who know the organisation will answer it for themselves. The honest answer comes from asking the people on the other side.
For HCML, a provider of rehabilitation, case management and workplace health, we interviewed the intermediaries who recommend and buy its corporate health services. Relationships are everything to them. They hunt constantly for credible content to share onward, and turn overwhelmingly to LinkedIn to find it. They want to hear from a provider all year round rather than be bombarded, and real stories land harder than messaging built around services.
Each is part of an answer to the question, and none could have been written at a desk. Together they shaped a year of content: a LinkedIn calendar, segmented emails, landing pages and lived experience storytelling. See the HCML work.
We came away with a brand that finally sounds like us and a content strategy that speaks straight to the people we most want to reach.
That is human-centred design in practice. For how to run the research well, see what good discovery actually looks like.
Make it the final pass
Make the question the last thing you do before anything goes out.
- 01Picture one reader
Not an audience, one person. A solicitor between meetings, a candidate on a phone, a family planning a kitchen.
- 02Write the answer down
One line each for what they need to think, feel and do after reading. If you cannot, the piece is not ready.
- 03Read it as them
Top to bottom, ideally out loud. Mark every line that serves you rather than them.
- 04Check the next step
One, obvious, and the least effort thing in front of them.
- 05Cut
Remove whatever cannot answer the question cleanly.
You will cut more than you add, which is almost always the right direction. If the next step is the weak point, why one clear call to action beats five picks that up. If it is the words, see our copywriting page.
The whole method in one sentence
If you only take one thing from everything we publish, take this question. It does more than any tactic, because it is the whole of human-centred design in a single sentence.
Common questions
Isn't this just knowing your audience?
Knowing your audience is the research. The question is what you do with it, one piece at a time. Plenty of organisations have personas in a folder and still send emails with three asks. The question turns what you know into a test any draft can pass or fail.
Does it work for a whole brand or website, not just one page?
Yes. A brand answers it for the whole organisation: what people should think of you, how dealing with you should feel, what you want them to do. A website answers it page by page. Both start from how people really decide, which is the ground behavioural design covers.
