Have you ever gone into a shop, asked a question and wondered if you had landed on mars, because you have absolutely NO idea what the person is talking about!

If you are anything like me, there are industries that you have no clue about and which completely baffle you. In other words, certain service and product providers use language that you just don’t understand.

As a business owner who wants to attract MORE customers and keep them, I strongly suggest that you know or find out what words your customers use to describe your business.

Marketing is about communication and as we all know, misinterpretation often occurs which means that your customers can either become overwhelmed by technical jargon and just not buy at all or choose to go to your competitors who may have a more succinct marketing message that customers can understand.

Examples of jargon:

Having spent some time more recently around boats but not having any knowledge of them I became quite mystified by some of the words being used by other boaters. It took me a couple of weeks to figure out that the ‘prop’ was in fact the propellor, which is a pretty useful thing to have and understand if you want to move your boat at all!

I think you can see though that if I were to buy a boat in the morning and without knowledge of this key reference, I may be put off buying a boat by this and other industry jargon references.

Several years ago I did a round the world trip and spent some time in Australia, I was most surprised one day whilst shopping with my 6ft 2 cousin Andrew, calmly announcing he badly needed to buy ‘thongs!” Now just consider in Ireland and other parts of Europe at least, a thong refers to a VERY flimsy piece of ladies underwear, hence my surprise at my strapping cousin ‘badly’ needing a pair!

It turns out that in Australia thong’s are actually flip flops (beach footwear) and not flimsy ladies underwear!

Do you see how easy it is for customers to become confused by differing language whilst buying different products.

The engineering industry, chemical industry and a few more are choc o bloc full of technical jargon which merely leaves customers confused.

AND

There is but one rule:

If customers are confused they simply will not buy.

Steps to take to understand the language customers:

Survey your customers, in particular ask for some written or oral feedback, to help you understand in greater depth, your customers challenges and how you can help. More importantly you get a sense of your customers dilemma in THEIR words

After having conversations with customers keep note of keywords or phrases that your CUSTOMERS use. The chances are if one customer describes your product / service in a particular way, it is quite likely others will too

Organize a focus group or depth interviews, which are really just where you ask a group or individual some preset questions about your industry or business. The process takes about an hour and I would highly recommend recording the session. Believe me the content and language they use are gold

Last but no means least, use YOUR CUSTOMERS PHRASES in your marketing communications.

Why?

Other customers will understand it better and will be more likely to buy from you too.

Additionally you should Educate your customers, using their language

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