How To Make Sure Your Customers Understand What You Are Saying

Here’s a funny video showing what happens when you don’t communicate clearly.

I believe that 80% of disagreements in this world stem around differing definitions of words as opposed to differing philosophies.

What I mean to say is that I believe most people agree in principle on most things, but because we have different understanding of words, we end up bickering endlessly.

Often brands say something that makes sense to them, but is complete gibberish to their customers. There is a layer to this that comes from using vague and broad words that can mean many different things.

I do marketing. When I tell someone this, half the time they ask me, “so you do sales?”

When I say I offer digital marketing, they ask, “What does that even mean?”

When I say I offer search engine marketing, they ask, “you mean like keywords and optimizations?” (what does that even mean?)

When I say I do online advertising, they ask, “You mean popups and banners and annoying ads that follow me around everywhere?”

All this time, what I meant to say is that “I help businesses find customers who are searching for exactly what you offer in Google with the intention to buy…and make sure they buy from you.” Even if I said this, they would ask, what types of businesses?

There are many different ways to communicate your message to prospects and customers, but it is really important to speak their language and make sure they understand exactly what you are trying to communicate.

How can you make sure they understand you? I like to use the 11 year old test. Find a child, and explain what you do or what you are trying to say. If an 11 year old can’t understand, you are probably not communicating clearly enough. Writing great copy takes many many many many revisions and tweaks, if you don’t put in the time to get it right, you probably won’t communicate with everyone you are trying to reach.