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How plain should your English be? Here is a back issue of Marketing Booster, the email newsletter that Richard Groom writes and sends free every fortnight to subscribers. You can subscribe here or read over 60 back issues using the back issues index page. In a recent issue of Marketing Booster I looked at the question: should we teach granny to suck eggs? In other words, just how technical should our marketing writing be? And to what extent should we spell out the background information in our marketing materials? I asked for feedback from readers and the consensus was two-fold: 1. People generally feel that business-to-business marketing material in particular is too often written in technical language. It often assumes a high level of knowledge on the part of the reader. 2. Subscribers also said that it's hard to shake people out of writing in this style. (I think the phrase 'my boss won't change' was used at least once!) Over the next few paragraphs I'm going to report one other bit of research AND give you a solution. First, the research. It seemed to me that the argument against writing marketing materials in a very easy-to-read, conversational style that errs on the side of explaining jargon is that readers will feel patronised. The typical IT company marketing director or MD says: "IT managers will feel patronised if we write in a simple language." So I asked several friends and business contacts: "Have you ever felt you were being patronised when reading marketing materials?" And guess what. No-one said they did. No-one could remember a single time when they felt that way. They all said something like: "I just like it when I can understand the message quickly and if I see a bit that I already know I just skip on to the next bit. No problem.' Isn't it funny how no-one says they remember being patronised, yet everyone is worried about patronising other people? (It's a bit like the way no-one likes annoying Flash animations on other people's web site yet everyone seems to want them on their own, but that's another issue altogether.) Now here's the solution I promised. It's all about balance. The balance between jargon and industry-speak on the one hand, and plain writing on the other. Let's say you are writing marketing materials aimed at people who buy office chairs. Sure, there will be sentences that talk about waterfall seats, tension controls, gas lifts, spider bases, synchronous actions, roll braking castors, knee tilting mechanisms and so on. But surely most of the text needs to be a lot simpler. How about explaining how the person sitting in the chair will use all these functions, and what benefit they get? And how about doing all of that in simple English? You get the balance like this: you still keep the techie stuff in for the geeks, but you also have some simple stuff for the rest of us. Here are three ways to strike a balance between simple and techie content: 1. Switch between the two levels of information. Introduce things with a few simple paragraphs that everyone will understand. Then throw in a paragraph of specialist language to strike a chord with the technical readers. Then back to simple paragraphs and so on. 2. Have all your main body copy in plain English and use boxes of text to cover the technical information. Give the technical stuff to the readers who want it, but separate it out and use subheadings like 'spec check'. 3. Write your main brochure in simple language but also produce a shorter 'insert' document of technical information. The techie stuff will be there if people need it, but it won't be confusing things for the average reader. (How about separate technical pages on your web site too?) I chose the chair example earlier because I have a bad back and need to buy a new office chair. In front of me is a catalogue with 25 pages of chairs and lots of the technical phrases I've listed above. And even though I do just about understand what they all mean, I haven't a clue which chairs would be best for me. So the people who went to all the time and expense of producing this catalogue won't get my business. Now it's over to you: take a long hard look at your web site, leaflets, sales letters etc. and ask yourself these questions: 1. Will ALL our potential customers understand every line, the first time they read the material? 2. Is there a BALANCE between the jargon and simple explanations of what our products/services actually do? 3. Have our materials been written and approved by people who really understand things from the READER'S view, or by someone who is so familiar with the products/services that they can't see the need to be clear and simple? Copyright 2003 Richard Groom |