Finding the right words

When a company is working on a new marketing piece, be it a website, pamphlet or newsletter, finding the right words to convey the message is absolutely vital to success – but it doesn’t need to be a difficult endeavour.

For starters, if you have a good marketing plan developed, you should have all of the messaging laid out for you. Go back to your plan and pull out the information you require. If you didn’t do this ground work at the beginning of your marketing process then you’ll need to do it now.

If you’re launching a new product or service you need to develop a strong value proposition and ensure your messaging conveys the characteristics, features and benefits that your prospects are most interested in. Knowing what your prospets value is the fundamental step in getting your wording right.

But knowing what ‘triggers’ will work for your audience is just half of the equation. The other half is to have an understanding of your audience’s bandwidth. When I refer to bandwidth I don’t mean the amount of data that can be transmitted along a channel during a specified period of time. Rather, I mean your audience’s capacity for obtaining and digesting information – especially depending on the channel you’re using.

With ever growing on-line correspondence tools (email, banner ads, etc), it’s important to keep in mind what the audience can handle in terms of volume and copy. Content that you developed for your print collateral is very likely not appropriate for on-line readers. You need to determine when you are simply “teasing” your audience and when you are educating them.

When you sit down to finalize your message, keep in mind what your audience can digest in the medium that you’re using – a print ad, an email and a conference speech should all have the same fundamental message from your company, but will need to be said at different lengths and words so that your audience can capture your meaning.

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