A fact sheet is a concise one-page document used to share your information in a way that impacts your reader and does it fast. Using the magic of the right typography, design elements, iconography & color harmony, and fact sheets makes the reading process a lot less boring and monotonous for your target audience.
Why Do Businesses Use a Fact Sheet?
There are many reasons why people make fact sheets, so there is no exhaustive list of functions they can be used for.
That said, most businesses use them to the following ends:
- As a PR tool used by comms or outreach teams to quick-share details about a campaign, product, or event with new people
- As a reference guide for customers and potential buyers on how a product is priced or used, or its most essential features
- To create an HR resource for new hires so they can learn about a company’s policies and procedures
- As part of investor briefings to create a snapshot of your company’s financial performance or corporate strategies
- For legal and regulatory purposes, they can help you disseminate any safety guidelines or legal disclaimers you need to in order to meet industry standards and be absolved of any legal liability
What’s a Good Fact Sheet?
A good fact sheet is short, crisp, and nicely formatted, with bite-sized information shown in visually appealing ways for anyone to digest easily & quickly. It has a clear structure, uses the right colors & strikes the perfect balance of text, design, and images to play up key information about a product, service, event, business, campaign, project – or anything really!
Start by thinking about why you are making a fact sheet in the first place or what industry, audience, or purpose you’re catering to. That said, all fact sheets have the same goal – creating a high-level, compressed view of facts & figures in a way that’s easy on the eyes and holds your reader’s attention.
Dive deeper into four key elements of a fact sheet: purpose, audience, content, and design. Later, we discuss some key features of our pre-made, editable templates. Why not grab one for free to get started right away!
Purpose
Without a clear sense why you’re making a fact sheet, you are only throwing snippets of knowledge on a piece of paper, hoping they stick in the right places!
That’s why you need a clear objective before you start designing or customizing one. You may be looking to raise funds, recruit members, sell a product, create a summary of your business or project, and so on.
From investor pitches & executive briefings to marketing and advocacy campaigns, fact sheets fit in everywhere as highly versatile, powerful documents to help you win over the right people, say potential investors, clients, customers, voters or members.
Audience
A fact sheet is a great tool for quick knowledge-sharing. It helps you amplify the impact of any information you think is important and needs to be shared with a select group of people.
Harness the potential of efficient communication by ensuring your fact sheet hits the right ears the right way. From potential investors and business partners to elected representatives, potential clients, or new hires – a good fact sheet is able to meet the needs & expectations of those being targeted.
For example, a potential investor in your company will naturally have a keen interest in finding out how much profit was made last year, to help them make a more informed decision. Use this Business Fact Sheet to tell people about what you’re selling and how successful you’ve been so far.
Content
Market or academia, there’s no denying that content is king everywhere. In a world where mass information is at our fingertips, go the extra mile to make sure your content is purposeful, strategically chosen, supported by numbers, and brings your readers back to what you’re trying to sell, promote, or educate on.
Here’s the content map of a typical fact sheet:
- Your company logo, name, and tagline
- An introduction or overview
- Executive summary
- Visual Aids: Graphs, charts, tables, and other diagrams to highlight key statistics.
- Infographics & text boxes
- Relevant data & statistics or key facts & figures.
- A clear and powerful Call To Action
- Key details about the product, event, or company
- Contact Information
- References or sources (if needed)
To create content that drives action & engagement, you have to stay true to the purpose it serves. Naturally, this varies for different types of fact sheets. If you are marketing a new product, you need to talk about your product’s key features, benefits, use cases, client testimonials, unique selling points (USPs), etc. But if your goal is to welcome a new employee, your fact sheet will cover things like an overview of your company’s history, mission, values, policies, and procedures.
Design
They say knowledge is power, but the key to successful knowledge-sharing is presenting facts in a more visually impactful way.
From attention-grabbing fonts, images, and icons, to colorful charts, bulleted lists, engaging infographics, and text boxes that pop out of the page (or screen!), the right design is the crowning feature of a good fact sheet, as it helps you transfer more knowledge in less time – it’s simply more efficient!
You can use graphic visual aids like bars, graphs, tables, and charts to play up any numbers, data or information you think is important. Neat, chic layouts and harmonious color palettes can help you create a better sense of visual balance, color contrast and design harmony that you need to grab the attention of your readers – and retain it!
If you are interested in color theory or how it can step up your design game, you should check out our Color Wheel Charts Series here for more amazing tips & insights!
Free Templates by WordLayout to Make Your Own
Looking for a quick & easy way to make a fact sheet?
A pre-built structure saves you time and effort. Lucky for you, at WordLayout, our team loves to experiment with new aesthetics and different ways of sharing useful knowledge. The end result? Multiple layout & design options for you to choose from, so you can focus on what really matters – the content.
Our templates are designed for various industries, from businesses, nonprofits and hotels to tech and real estate firms. We offer customizable features (charts, graphs, icons, and sliders) you can easily tailor to your target audiences. You can also rebrand our templates using your company logos & colors, and make these templates truly yours!
Once downloaded in the correct format, edit as per your branding needs & requirements using our built-in features such as:
- Placeholder Logo & Text
- Adjustable headers & sections
- Adjustable sliders
- Customizable graphs
- Bar, line, columns & pie charts
- Replaceable HD images or pictures
- Tables & graphs
- Infographics
- Icons, shapes & vector images
- Data widgets and other visual elements
- Bullet lists
- Timelines
- Contact Us or Get In Touch section
- Space for FAQs. client testimonials, key facts etc.
- Call to Action
Fact Sheet Templates
Fully customizable, print-ready, and available in multiple file formats.
Go to CollectionHow To Edit Graphs & Charts Online
Our templates come with built-in graphs, charts and other visual aids you can use to show annual trends, relevant stats or financial figures.
Here’s how:
- Open the file in Google Slides.
- Click on the feature to access Linked Chart options.
- Click on the button with three dots, and select the first option, ‘Open Source’.
- Once open in Google Sheets, create a copy of the chart or graph by clicking on ‘File’ —> ‘Make a copy’
- Now, personalize it by adding your own set of values.
- For further customization, click on the top-right of the chart – and select the first option, ‘Edit chart’ where you can make additional changes in style, colors and layout, etc.
- Once you’ve made the required changes, click on the top-right again, but this time select, ‘Copy chart’.
- Go back to the fact sheet open in your Google Slides tab.
- Once you paste the chart on Google Slides, you can choose one of two options (a) Link to Spreadsheet or (b) Paste Unliked. If you select the former, you can edit the chart directly on Google Slides. If you select the latter, your graph or chart will stay as it is.
- Adjust the size of the chart or graph so it easily fits in its designated area in the template
- Remove the default chart or graph and drag the edited one to its place.
Tips for Creating a Good Fact Sheet
Whether you’re pitching a new idea to a potential investor or telling people about your little start-up at a big business expo, all you need to do is find the right type of fact sheet for your specific need & use case.
Here are some pointers you might find useful:
- Less is More: A good fact sheet doesn’t bombard readers with too much information, especially when it doesn’t contribute in any direct way to the purpose of you making one.
- Keep it Simple: A good fact sheet is easy for a layman to understand. If you are talking about a complex concept or idea, use simple and plain language. Avoid technical jargon wherever possible so you can appeal to a wider readership.
- Visuals Matter: When it comes to fact sheets, design speaks louder than words. Curate your content carefully using graphic visual aids to highlight information that really matters!
- Structure Is Key: A good structure will flaunt your content to the maximum. Have a clear title, a short intro, main body sections with headings (and subheadings) and a concluding section to help you organize and present information in a more strategic way.
- Inspire Action: A call-to-action (CTA) (preferably at the end of your fact sheet) directs your readers to what they need to do next. This could be anything: getting in touch with you, signing up as a member, or telling others about your product.
Wrap Up
Whether you’re introducing your company at a trade summit or raising public awareness around a cause close to your heart, there are countless occasions in life when a fact sheet can help you put your point across more effectively than the spoken word.
All you need to do is add your own text, images, and branding elements to our pre-made templates, and voila! You have a professional-looking one-pager tailored to your business or company. Our templates are available in multiple formats including .PPT and .AI for offline editing. They can also be accessed via Google Slides for cloud-based sharing and editing.
Download NOW to create a crispy one-pager in just a few clicks so you can share information in a smarter and more impactful way!
