Here’s how you avoid marketing-speak

Transform. Revolutionize. Cutting-edge. Game-changing. Unleashing potential.

If you’re being tasked with selling your product or service online, this type of language is poison. It swiftly kills any enthusiasm your customer might have for what you’re selling.

Not just because it lacks specificity. Or that it’s not personal.

Because it’s boring.

No one wants to spoken to this way. And no one wants to read this stuff. If you’ve concluded that this is the best way to speak to your customers, you haven’t done enough research, or endured enough pain of failure to learn otherwise.

Why marketing-speak happens so much in b2b

When I’ve seen this happen with clients, it’s usually for one of the following reasons:

1) Wanting to make your product sound sophisticated or professional

Often people think using big words makes their product sound more important.

It comes from a lack of confidence in your product. Which is understandable! If your product is new and untested, then it makes sense that you can’t really say definitively how impactful its going to be. So you start to use over-compensating language.

Customers can sniff the insecurity. It’s the equivalent of driving a huge truck to your office job.

2) Trying to sound visionary—and position your product

If your product is untested or lacks authority, sometimes marketers try to talk about a future in which this product will be everywhere (and my implication, so will your company).

But talking about the future is often vague, not specific. It talks about ideas that are hard to picture, not the tangible reality of today.

The latter is where you want to be.

3) It’s the only idea no one hates internally

The number of people who need to approve of language or ideas is inversely proportional to the meaning the end-customer will get.

I saw this a lot working in pharma, and it’s a big reason why every spot looks the same.

For any idea to get made, the medical team has to approve for accuracy. Legal then adds a bunch of clauses to your punchy headlines. Regulatory wants to change the idea entirely. Upper management sees the new idea. It’s not good! So you go back to testing and try to fix the idea no one loved but no one hated. And you find no one else seems to hate it either.

So you ship your spot with the couple walking on the beach.

And the tough part is that all of these people are smart! They want the best outcome. But this type of language is a product of internal consensus.

Which is why they don’t want you to change any of it.

4) You haven’t talked to enough users

If you’re GTM for the first time, you often don’t have a clear enough picture in your head of your user.

If I asked you about your ideal customer, you should be able to describe them as if you were telling me about a friend you’d want me to meet.

What is their name? What do they do for work? What are they into? What makes them laugh? What are they focused on to get promoted at their next annual review? When are they most likely to read your stuff?

This is really a variation of the adage “write for an audience of 1.” Your website shouldn’t have any copy on it you wouldn’t say to a real human being sitting across from you.

Think of your next sales call. Who is it with? Your website should be written for that person. Nail that. Then start looking for what all your sales targets have in common.

Write for an audience of 1 times however many times you need.

Hugs and Kisses!
CIG