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5 things that can utterly destroy your message and how you can fix them



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5 things that can utterly destroy your message and how you can fix them

If your messages aren't doing their job, they're losing you money.  They need to speak to the right audiences and be powerful at the same time, if not, you won't be getting the results you are targeting.  In short, you'll lose a lot of money from pushing marketing campaigns that don't convert into a sale.

Words are the basis of online sales, if you don't type them up in a certain way, you lose all power and money.  A good writer can type up some sales jargon in a single afternoon and have you making sales the next day, but what if you can't afford a writer?  Can you do this all yourself?  Sure you can!

Here are five ways that simple words can harm your marketing message, and how you can fix them.

1. You're using too many words in your message
8 seconds is how long you have in order to catch the attention of your visitors.  Yes, it's that short of time in which you have to change a persons mind from "I might get this" to "I need this now!".  If you're targeting millennials you have even less time at 5 seconds lol.

In short, every single word that is not 100% necessary needs to be removed from any sales copy that you're pushing in front of people.  If you don't fine tune this, you're just going to be wasting money on a failing machine, and it will only fail because of the few words that you kept on the page.

Just get to the point and don't waste time doing so!  Here are a few ways to do that...


  1. K.I.S.S. (Keep It Super Simple): You'll need to remove any filler or fluff from your message because that's just eating into your 5 to 8 seconds.  The more words you cut out, the more you will get out of your message.  I'm not saying that you can't add more content into your message, just make sure you're not rambling on about something you don't need to.

    Remove any filler words in order to keep everything simple.  Good words to remove are "really", "that", and "very".  Don't treat them like they're your grandmother, treat them like cockroaches and burn them in hellfire.

  2. T.M.I (Too Much Information): If you're writing up a story about how your visitors need to look into purchasing your service, you need to delete all of that right now.  Having too much information will just turn people away from reading it.  Remember those 5 to 8 seconds are the only time you have to convert someone into your new client, so use them wisely!

  3. Red Pen Rule: Write up what you think would work best, and then bust out your red pen for deletion time.  You'll want to remove roughly 30% of what you've written, and this means you're removing all the stuff that doesn't need to be there.  When you're done with this you should have a pretty good message that will keep people interested within that 5 to 8 second mark.


2. You're using Jargon
When you're using big words and jargon you're just pushing people away.  Not everyone will know what you're talking about, so they will lose interest pretty quick.  Even if your target market will understand your big words and jargon, they probably don't want to see it in an advert or within the first 8 seconds of reading an article.

One of the important things you need to remember is that your message needs to be understood and your audience needs content that speaks to them.  It doesn't matter what type of jargon you think you're audience will like, leave it out just to be safe.  A guaranteed loss is when someone reads your message, sees some jargon in it and cringes.  You don't want that.

Find the jargon and big words within your ad copy or website copy and think to yourself "Are these really necessary or can I delete them?" and the answer is usually "I can delete them".  The only way that jargon can be used is if it has a special place in the hearts of your readers, and even then it could be a loss.  To play it safe, just replace the jargon and big words with simpler words.


3. You're using the wrong pronouns
The best marketing messages will speak about the audience and not necessarily about the company behind the copy.  This means you should be using second person pronouns much more often than first person pronouns.

  • First Person: I, Me, Mine, We, Us, Our, Ours
  • Second Person: You, Your, Yours

The truth is that no one will care about you personally, they want to know if your product or service will make their lives easier.  If your message only talks about you and your service, you're not filling a void or fixing a problem that the consumer might have.

To fix this you need to look over your ad copy and content to see where you've used first person pronouns and try to convert them into second person pronouns as best you can.  This will show that you're talking to the potential customer and you're not talking about yourself.

A good example of this is if you're talking about how you have 300 sales representatives taking calls for your business.  It doesn't really talk to your consumer, and needs to be fixed.  You'd be better off saying something like "YOUR wait time is low because there is always someone to hear YOUR questions".


4. You're using passive verbs
When you're working on ad copy or a marketing plan, you will usually want it to create some sort of action from your users.  Your copy should include a call to action and also motivate your readers to actually click on your links.  If you're using a passive voice and not an active one, you could actually be hurting your ad copy and this will need to be changed.

If you're using a passive voice, it will look something like "The ball was punted by James", but if you're using an active voice it will look something like "James punted the ball".  An active voice is where the subject performs the verb and not the verb showing the subject (if that makes sense).

Fixing something like this just takes a little bit of restructuring.  You'll need to read through all of your copy and see where the action is coming before the subject, and try to flip them as best you can.  By doing this you're talking in an active way and people will take to it much better.


5. You're not using any sort of emotional wording
If you're not tapping into your traffics emotional triggers, you're not doing something right.  Ads or content that invokes an emotional response will always be better than something which does not.  This is because most of the purchasing decisions are made by some sort of emotion.

A few great emotional triggers to write for:
  1. Fear
  2. Guilt
  3. Comfort
  4. Competition
  5. Trust

You can fix all of this by writing how your product or service can benefit your target audience.  By doing this you'll invoke some sort of emotion and this will usually trigger a click through and possibly a purchase.




In Conclusion:
If you don't have the money to invest into a good copywriter, you don't have to worry.  You can do this all on your own and after a few times you will be a pro at it!  But just like everything, it takes time to learn what works and what doesn't.  After a few successful runs, you will notice that you're writing in a different way, a better way, and you don't even have to think about it anymore!



Remember to follow me!
https://www.seoclerks.com/user/Razzy


Thanks!

Razzy

Comments

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DarthHazard
The second point that you mentioned is probably the most important. A lot of people don't know a lot of technical words and it just means absolutely nothing to them. The best thing to do is to try and create a simple message that can be understood by a large variety of people. If your message is too complicated to understand by those that do not know the technical words for that niche/industry then you are losing a lot of potential customers.



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Corzhens
This reminds me of the case of a Chinese car. They named it Cheery to mean happy and positive. But the translator didn’t understand the instruction very well because the writer was too engrossed in the technical aspect. What came out was Chery instead of the desired Cheery. The name of the car remained Chery and it was even exported to other Asian countries. That’s a neat lesson on being clear with your message. Avoid too technical words to drive home your point.



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Tronia
Yep! The best promotional messages are the ones that are short yet very impactful. Something that everybody will remember for days. There isn't any point in creating overly complicated messages because like you have said, you keep the readers attention for around 5 seconds so you must use them wisely or you waste your money.

That is why it is often good to hire marketing and promotional companie or individuals that are specialised in these areas. They know how to get the wanted reaction.



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Authord
Well, i don't think that too many words can affect your message. Because to me, I would go with someone, who describes the product well and has too many words, to someone who uses little word. But you must first of all make the first sentence catching and attractive, by hitting the nail by the head in a way that can trigger curiosity ,to catch the reader's attention. Then you can now type what ever you want to type and he would read on to the end. It is science.



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Tronia
I can't agree with you. There have actually been conducted some market researches that have shown that too many words do affect your message because most people only give you around 5 seconds of attention like Razzy said. If they see a bunch of words, they will not read it through. The best and most optimal thing if you want your message to have an impact on the majority of people would, therefore, be to use fewer words but use them wisely.



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Authord
Yeah. That's clearly my opinion like I clearly stated in my comment. what works for others will not work for everyone. When your messages are too short and I come across it, what will I do?, I bounce it and pitch my tent on a longer message. That's how am wired, and I know they are people that think like me out there too.



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ballyhara
Exactly, in my personal experience if a message is way to long, then I just avoid it or read quite few words to get a general notion of it, but is not like I'm going to spend hours reading it. I rather get a quick, simple, focused message. When you want to give information, just go straight to the point, going in circles won't help for sure.



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JoeMilford
I am the same way, actually. Some subject matter requires the extra verbiage and explanation; however, if you can say effectively what you want and need to say in the fewest words possible, that is the best way to go.



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augusta
These tips are a must follow for anyone that wants to be a great writer, you just capture everything that there's to writing and also capturing the interest of a reader.The message must always be short and simple.Nothing holds me down like a short captivating piece.

As a writer, I really need to follow these rules to improve my writing skills.We must continue to improve on our craft as we progress.



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overcast
As they say sometimes less is more. And you have to connect the dots the right way. You can see that people who try to write so much. They assume other people take time and then make use of the time to read the content. That's not always possible to fix things. I think that's why copywriters are designed to write the content this way. And they attract people towards their content. That's what I have found.

You can see that if your message takes time in such case you'd be in more of trouble that way. I think writing is a very hard skill. It can turn simple website into product based landing page. So it all depends on how the content is being consumed by users. That's where we pay attention.



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kgord
Usually you should tell them what you want to tell them, tell them again, and let it rest. Going on and on, about any particular topic is just going to cause someone to tune out. It is important to convey the proper message to your audience and make sure they here what you are saying without over wording it.



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JoeMilford
These are all good tips here, and I am pretty sure I am guilty of being too wordy, that's for sure. Also, I really need to watch my passive voice tendencies. I can easily revert to passive voice if I am not careful. There is a fine line, as well, between "jargon" and your own particular phrasings and with developing your own style and cadence of writing which is the best for your choice of subject matter. I think that what you are saying here is indicative of being very conscious of your audience; you should never kowtow to your audience, and you need to be true to yourself in your writing, but you do need to be aware of when you are being too self-indulgent, or not revising enough, so that you are always producing a solid project.



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Pixie06
That's an informative post. I will make sure that I remember those tips. I believe that the simpler something is the better it is. I received a mail from a specific company some months back. I had to read two whole paragraphs but the message could have been conveyed in just a few lines. This was definitely annoying. I also agree that emotional wordings will have some impact on people and they will react positively.



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Corzhens
This reminds me of our English teacher in high school. She would always remind us of her motto in writing - clear and concise. That means you need not put in too many words or phrases and don't overdo the idiomatic expressions. Clear and concise to me means using ordinary words so the reader would not be needing a dictionary to understand and that the writing should not be lengthy. As we used to say in school, straight to the point.



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