The collaboration and innovation of creative, thoughtful people are what keeps marketing such a fresh and human-based industry. Marketing allows you to combine storytelling, psychology, and – if you're selling a product you believe in – service all into one. All of these aspects need to be combined and called upon to find the right message to reach your audience.
Using effective messaging that gets through to your customers is challenging for marketers who don't have a thorough understanding of how their audience thinks or feels. Mastering the language of successful marketing is something every marketer needs to learn how to do. It's the difference between creating a lifelong customer and having a visitor close their browser after five seconds on your site.
So how do you talk to your audience in a way that will get them to care about what you're saying (and selling?)
The key is simply to keep it simple. And here's why.
Your customer's are more than just your customers. They are professionals, parents, athletes, gardeners… dynamic, busy people with dynamic, busy lives. So it's important to remember that while you might live and breathe every important detail of your industry, your customers don't, and they don't necessarily want to. It all goes back to K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) coined by the Navy back in the 60's.
You are much closer to your product and industry than your potential customer may be. We can use Multiple (our agency) as an example. Our clients are you, the marketer. There is a wide range of people in the marketing field with an even wider range of experience. Not everything we write is directed at the CMO, nor do we only write for marketing people that only have two years of experience. We try to create a plan based on our target persona and a specific initiative.
Customers don't need to spend their 15 minute break at work reading your new age Shakespeare (unless that’s your target market of course!). Just because you can craft furiously detailed and well written emails right down to annotated bibliographies and footnotes doesn't mean you should. Marketing is work for you. It shouldn’t be for your customer. So, every single piece of content you create should be enjoyable and easy to read. Emails don't need to be 800 words, and your layouts don’t need to fill up every piece of open real estate. As we designers say, embrace the “white space”. Your customers are busy, and you will lose them if you cause them to burn too many “brain calories”.
Marketing language is all about keeping things simple and herein lies what makes content creation such a challenging and invigorating task for a writer. Always put yourself in your customer's shoes and think about how you would like to experience using your product if you were on the other end.
And, don't be afraid to create less in order to get more.
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