Choosing the Right Words - Part 2
Written by Ken Johnson
Most of us know the issues associated with choosing the right words when we speak or write, and most of us cringe when we see "they're" where we should see "their" or when we see "except" when we should see "accept." In Rhetoric, we use the phrase form equals content, and we mean by that that how we write causes people to use judge our content by our form. If we use poor form, then many people expect poor content from us.
Form also matters when we advertise. So many emails I receive contain words that add no value to the messages that I quickly stop reading, and when I stop reading, I don't buy. As we think about advertising, we think about which words best communicate our messages and which words add no value. Once we identify no-value words, we should eradicate them ASAP!
Last week, I wrote about knowing your audience and stated that all writing should start there. If we build on that, we see that the words you choose should carry the meanings that you want with that audience. For example, if people write for an audience of people like me, using farm analogies would go nowhere even though I live where many people farm. Thus, the more information we know about our audiences, the better we can craft sentences that will appeal to them. CLI excels at helping clients know all they can about their audiences, and that helps understand why our modeled segmentation of lists becomes so important. Of course, we can segment all day long, but without the right words, we may still see our advertising fail.
So, knowing our audiences and choosing the right words for each of those segments within our audience becomes paramount if we want to maximize our ROI of advertising. Return soon for some examples of poor advertising and suggestions for advertising better.
- Ken Johnson
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