It can take a lot of time to tell potential customers or investors everything about your company from background to vision. But what if you had a simple document that could present this information in a clear, concise, and compelling format? A fact sheet tells the reader all the essential details about your business, product, or service; outlining what you do and why they should care. It plays a central role in sales, investor pitches, PR, and client or employee.
If you own a business, read on to find out how to prepare this crucial document from scratch or by using a fillable Fact Sheet Template.
Fact Sheet Templates and Examples
What Is a Fact Sheet?
A fact sheet (alternative spelling factsheet) is a one-page document that outlines crucial information and data about a startup, company, organization or their products or services. It is a visual representation of all the key facts, figures, and information surrounding a given topic, accompanied by images, charts, and the like. Depending on your preferences, it could review your company, technical data, product statistics, or answer FAQs and provide educational material.
What Is a Fact Sheet Template?
If you don’t want to create a fact sheet from scratch, you can use a Fact Sheet Template. This is a pre-contrived format that contains all the necessary segments of fact sheet that you can fill in and customize to come up with a document that suits your company.
Why Should You Write a Fact Sheet?
Fact sheets have a wide range of uses and can be used small and large businesses alike. Before preparing one, you should identify your goal: what do you wish to achieve with your fact sheet? Some reasons companies prepare these documents include:
- As an introduction for new investors
- As a sales and marketing tool to present to prospective partners or clients.
- As a media relationship or PR strategy to inform journalists about a business.
- For human resources organizational purposes.
- For internal reporting e.g. when created by the finance department to highlight a company’s earnings.
Before Writing a Fact Sheet
Your company’s fact sheet will speak for you to clients, prospective partners, and investors. Consequently, you want it to be as detailed and compelling as possible without being too long. Here as some things to consider before creating your fact sheet:
- Keep your fact sheet to one-page long
- Be concise and brief when presenting information
- Make sure your fact sheet is readable: pay attention to color, design, and font.
- Make your fact sheet visually appealing by including tables, graphs, charts, images, and bullet points.
- Close the document with a call to action and your contact information.
Essential Elements of a Fact Sheet
The content of your fact sheet will depend on your intended goal and the type of business you are running. That said, the typical fact sheet will contain the following information:
- Heading
- Paragraph summarizing the most important information about the business, product, or service.
- Supporting facts in pullet list form
- Brief business background
- Company mission and vision
- Attributions or sources
- Call to action
- Images, graphs, charts, tables
- Links (where to go for more details)
- Contact information
Besides the content, you should also pay attention to the design of your fact sheet. The most effective fact sheets present crucial information in an interactive and convincing way by making use of visual data like images, graphs, charts, quotes, and fact bubbles.
How to Write a Fact Sheet
The content of a fact sheet will vary from company to company and depending on why it is being written. Nonetheless, the typical fact sheet is short, single-page, and contains both written and visual data. Here is a step-by-step guide to help you formulate such a document:
Step 1: Create a header
The header serves as the title of your fact sheet. Try to include a bold heading along and a striking image related to your brand that will capture your reader’s attention.
Step 2: Describe Your Company
Next, write down a short company description containing information like company name, year of establishment, office locations, and number of employees.
Step 3: Give a Business Background
Help the reader understand your company’s history by giving them a short background. Write about how, when, and why your company started, who started it, and what you hope to achieve in the future (company mission and vision).
Step 4: Highlight Your Products or Services
Explain what your business offers in terms of products or services. Convince the reader that you do this better than your competition and use metrics and comparisons for emphasis.
Step 5: Highlight Some Milestones
Mention some of your company’s major accomplishments and milestones. For example, sales, expansions, etc. You can also incorporate some visual data or newspaper quotes as proof.
Step 6: Provide Additional Information
Towards the end, talk about other topic like company leadership, key metrics, and core values. You can even answer some frequently asked questions.
Step 7: Indicate Your Contact Information
Finally, summarize your fact sheet by including basic contact information such as, your company email address, phone number, and social media profiles. Call the reader to reach out to you.
Mistakes to Avoid When Writing a Fact Sheet
It is very easy to get caught up in describing your company and forget that your fact sheet must be readable, compelling, and brief. Here is a list of things you should avoid if you wish to stay on track:
- Illegible font: When stuck between two fonts, choose the bigger one. You want a font size that your readers will not struggle to see or which will bore them. Rather than try to fit in more information on the sheet by using a small font, edit your data and use a legible one.
- Sources over facts: While it is important to cite your sources and attributions, they should never replace the information itself. Consider melding your sources and facts in a way readers will understand what you are saying and why you are saying it.
- Overwhelming your reader: You don’t want to big down your reader with too many statistics about one topic and lose their interest. Instead, give short, detailed descriptions and make your point in a clear concise way.
- Outdated data: Never use an old study where a more recent one will do. You should also update your fact sheet from time to time so the information is always current.
- Ignoring your reader: Don’t just describe your business, product, or service. Tell your audience why they should care and how you can solve their pain points.
Final Thoughts
Using a Fact Sheet Template, you can prepare an invaluable piece of document that summarizes all the critical information about your business. The document will be single-page but packed with information so readers learn more about your business, product, or service without being bogged down by pages and pages of data. It will also come in handy as a marketing tool and sales driver.
When drafting your fact sheet, pay attention to the design as much as the content. Create something appealing that your potential investors, clients, and employees will love reading.
