“I’m sorry I wrote you such a long letter. I didn’t have time to write a short one.” That quote from Blaise Pascal reveals a fundamental truth about writing, communications and marketing. Being vague and verbose is easy; being precise and concise is hard. Many people and small businesses struggle to deliver a powerful message in [...]
During my years as an editor, during which I sent out hundreds of briefs to other writers, I learned a really valuable lesson about communications. The lesson was this: anything that can be misinterpreted will be misinterpreted, because what’s in your head is never in anyone else’s head. So if you want someone to understand your [...]
Here’s a really curious fact you might have noticed. When adults speak to toddlers, they’re really good at explaining things in plain, clear, simple English. But when you take those same adults and put them in a business setting, strangely they lose the ability to speak clearly. Who knows why, but they suddenly start littering their [...]
“If you confuse, you lose” is a great principle to apply when you do your marketing. Don’t put out marketing that your customers have to work really hard to understand. They won’t bother and instead will just move on to your rival. You know, the rival that puts out clear, simple marketing. Don’t make people work [...]
Want to know the number one rule of communication? It’s this: what matters is not what you say, but what they hear. We’ve all experienced that maddening situation where we say one thing and the other person hears something completely different. When that happens, it’s easy to blame the other person; but it’s more useful to [...]
I’ve got two words for you: DONALD and TRUMP. I’m not going to talk about his policies or personality – that’s for you to judge. Instead, I’m going to talk about his approach to marketing and communications. Here’s my view: Trump is a genius at marketing and communications. There are two things Trump does brilliantly. First, [...]
The way you communicate with your customers is a form of marketing. Good communications is good marketing. Bad communications is bad marketing. I was reminded of this lesson when I called my bank to announce that I would be refinancing to a rival lender and received an appalling piece of customer communications in reply. Words matter, [...]
How do you know whether or not a particular piece of communications has been successful? Well, the aim of communications is to convey information. So if you managed to convey the information you were trying to convey – your communications was successful. If you didn’t – it wasn’t. So what’s the best way to successfully convey [...]
Ditch the business mumbo-jumbo in your marketing, because it’s a turn-off for customers, as I explain in this episode of 3MinuteMarketing. Instead of using complicated words and sentences, speak to your customers in plain, simple, everyday English. You can’t expect customers to connect with your marketing if they can’t understand it. Some businesses have a mistaken [...]
What does your small business sell? Whatever it is, you need to be able to explain it in clear, precise English. You need to do it on your website. And you need to do it when you meet potential customers and referral partners. This has actually been a challenge for me with my content marketing agency, [...]
