Avoid and protect yourself from these terms
Have you ever got an email like this?
“Hello,
My name is <<Person @ random company>> and I found your site whilst browsing the internet and have identified some key performance areas that don’t currently mesh for maximum ROI.
With our dynamic customer flow and award-winning mid-stage funnel optimization, we can help you capitalize on every part of the buyer process.
Our award-winning, smooth-email integration reacts to customer needs and ensures a secure and risk-free purchase path.
Let’s just jump on a quick call to see how we can help you 3x your revenue using our proprietary, customer matrix solution systems.”
Marketing jargon is its own language.
It’s designed specifically to make you feel inferior for not understanding it.
Read it once and it sounds optimistic. Read it twice and it sounds as vague as a psychic fishing for anyone who knows a John, James, or Jessica. “They just wanted you to know they’re okay.”
It’s about time someone stood up and told you what all of this really means.
Today we’re deciphering the nonsense that is marketing jargon.
These five terms will help save you from buying services that can’t stand up to their claims. If you spot one of these terms being used, run for the hills.
They only seek to take a huge slice of your marketing budget, for a task you’re probably already doing yourself.
#1. Dynamic Customer Flow
/ Origin, English.
Meaning: This can be literally any part of the process you use to sell to customers. Product pages, payment gateways, you name it.
Put simply it means “please give me your money and whatever you identify as a problem area for your business, I’m going to sell the solution back to you for a premium.”
It all works with “pacing & leading”
It sounds fancy because these salespeople will use a tactic hypnotists use called “pacing & leading”. Tell someone something they know to be true (pacing), then give them a suggestion (leading). The recipient will assume both bits of information are true.
Example:
1. “More people than ever are buying online. About 60% of the online shoppers we asked admit to doing 90% of their shopping online.” That’s a pacing statement. They continue…
“By using our new recommendations engine, we can ensure your business has true dynamic customer flow” (This is leading).
2. “Oh, I see an issue here. You want to sell more, right? Yes. But your customer flow is not dynamic enough. They need to be guided through the up-sell path dynamically to 3x your revenue.”
Bonus: “Your homepage should change based on your buyer's needs. If they already own a dog, perhaps show them cat food instead. That way your customer flow remains dynamic.”
#2. High-Level
/ Origin, English.
Meaning: This is a term salespeople love to describe a mundane demonstration. If you understand it, you feel good about yourself for being so clever. If you don’t, they win, because now you’ll feel stupid and likely to need the service they’re selling.
Example:
“Let me just walk you through this high-level demonstration on our ongoing strategic optimization. As you can see we’ve improved your dynamic customer flow by bringing the ‘add to cart’ button 36 pixels higher. Let’s review it in 3 months to see if it works.”
If you’ve got time, I’d love to get you on a call for a high-level demonstration. It’ll only take a quick 45 minutes for you to fully understand how our warm-integration provides product mapping across all seven possible sales channels.”
#3. Multi-Channel Optimization
/ Origin, English.
Meaning: This is as broad as you can get. It basically means we’ll help you do better work everywhere.
Honestly, they’re saying that the secret sauce is just “do more good work in every area of your business.”
It’s not the what, it’s the how that’s important here. If someone uses this on you, you need to know exactly how they’re going to create results. Specifics only.
Example:
“Our service helps 3x your revenue and gets a greater ROI by using multi-channel optimization to strengthen your personalization process.
#4. Advanced A.I. integration (to help build stronger customer relationships)
/ Origin, Unknown.
Meaning: The computer does something, and because we can’t measure it with sales, we needed to call it something. It uses very basic machine learning to automate something you probably already do with Mailchimp segments or store merchandising… but we’re going to charge you 5x as much.
Example:
“Our advanced A.I. integration engine tracks customer behavior to help nurture stronger customer relationships across all tiers of the optimization funnel.”
#5. Brand Awareness
/ Origin, English.
Meaning: For stuntmen, they use a crash mat to soften the blow, should they fall. In the profession of marketing, the term “brand awareness” is our crash mat.
Anyone that uses it to sell you a service is selling you hope. A 50/50 chance. It could work, it could not.
“Brand awareness” is the get-out-of-jail-free card for zero sales. Should a company offer “greater brand awareness” as a result of their service… run.
Example:
“We were expecting a 0.5% uplift in sales, but we actually noticed a decline, but this is okay. Those expensive ads had 1.5 million impressions, so even though sales weren’t as expected, this was invaluable brand awareness for your company. More people than ever now know about you… and that will create future sales for years to come.”
How to Win Without Using These Terms
If a service works, it should produce results. So sell the results, not the fancy terms.
A jargon-free email that would get my attention would be this…
“Hello Geraint Clarke,
After a partner of ours told us about your business, we were curious to have a look.
We can’t help everyone, but we think we’ve uncovered some areas of improvement for your business.
We help our current clients improve their emails to increase their annual revenue by 16.8%, on average. All of this for just a few simple clicks — the rest is automated.
The more you can put this boring stuff on auto-pilot, the more you can focus on building your company in other areas, so we feel like it could be beneficial service to you.
Take a look at our video/live demo <here> explaining exactly what the service does.
Pricing starts at $500 a month, but if you need more information, or to hear about our discounts, feel free to get in touch. You now have my direct contact details (below).
Even if you’re already doing this, <our service> could work out cheaper overall.
Thank you for your time.
<Person @ company name & contact details>”
Honesty & Openness Sells
Using marketing jargon only works against you by alienating potential clients.
What good is your selling-point of “building customer relationships” if your customers can’t understand you?
Strip away the fancy-sounding words, tell them exactly what it is, why they may need it, and how much it costs.
A good service that works can sell itself.