If you’re in business you should be constantly looking for ways to improve your marketing. There’s lots of things you can do but one of the most basic things is to ensure that you’re not blinding your audience with science and/or jargon. In other words: write in plain English.
Make sure you write in plain English and you will improve your marketing
You see, one of the biggest shifts in communication in the last few years has been the use of text messaging and social media. And this brings with it some challenges when trying to work out how to communicate with your target market.
These days it’s not enough simply to tell folks about what you have to offer in your marketing, you have to speak plainly and give them plenty of reasons to respond to your message.
But it all starts with a plain and simple message, written in plain language, that could easily be understood by almost anyone.
So here’s a worrying statistic: according to research carried out by DfES, the average reading age here in the UK is around that of a 12 year old.
Now if you run your own small business then you’ll be the expert in your field and it’ll surprise nobody if you write the text for your marketing materials such as your brochure or your website. But the problem here is that you’re more likely to be guilty of writing in language that you understand but may be hard to decipher by those you’re trying reach.
But, it’s not all bad news. You need to be involved in the writing but it’s possible that you shouldn’t have the final say in how it’s finally written.
What might be a workable method would be for you to write a draft and then have someone else tidy up the language for you. This could be a ‘not so technical’ colleague or a copywriter or editor.
Or you could simply have someone else write it for you. There’s plenty of subcontract writers out there who can help.
At the very least you should have what you’ve written checked over by someone who isn’t an expert in your field. Largely to check for spelling and grammar but also to check that it’ll easily be understood by your target audience.
So, in summary, aim to write in plain English and you will certainly improve your marketing.
I know it can feel like dumbing down but it’s better to have a message that’s clear and easy to understand than to have the cleverest marketing text that gets no response.