Changing the language

A lot of marketing terms conjure up unhelpful imagery, especially if you’re striving to make a genuine connection.

Let’s take a look at some of them, and see how we can improve the language so it sits better.

The Hook / Customer Hook / How to Hook Your Customers

I can’t help but picture catching a customer with a fishing hook, and dragging them unwillingly to the surface like a fish! While that’s not the intention of the term, the feeling it evokes isn’t always useful when trying to think of ways to share your product or service. Plus, hooks are often used as click-bait or to shock. Methods we want to try to avoid.

You’re essentially trying to connect with someone, when you meet someone in real life you don’t connect with them by creating a hook to reel them in, you try to find common ground as a means of connection. So maybe we can instead say:

The Connection / Customer Connection / How to Connect With Your Customers

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Target Audience / How to Target Your Customer

Whatever way you look at it, ‘target’ is not a jolly word. If you look up similar nouns you get:

prey
quarry
game
kill
bag

No wonder it doesn’t make for good feelings! We could think instead of phrasing like the below:

ldeal Customer / How to Connect With Your Customers

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More examples…

You catch my drift! Changing the language can have a profound effect on how comfortable you are with putting together your marketing material.

So next time you come across:

5 Hacks to be more persuasive!

.. for you it means

5 Ways to be more impressive!

… and you can get on with finding ways to impress prospective clients 🖤