Marketing Speak: How are you speaking to your customers?

I had an interesting email chat yesterday with Kathleen O’Conner of O’Copy.  We got on the issue of aligning your business with your Marketing Plan of Attack.  We chatted about voice, tone and language.

It got me to thinking about ‘marketing speak’; you know the words we use to communicate with our audience and whether they need to align in some way with what we do, i.e., our service or product.

When we prepare our Marketing Plan of Attack we define our market, we make our positioning statements and we create a USP. (Check out the video series if you’re lost…we’ll wait…)

The issue Kathleen raises is a good one and one we all need to think about.  Kathleen and I are both business owners, albeit different types of businesses, we are both marketers and we both help others use marketing and learn about marketing so it wasn’t an unusual thing to chat about.

And, we came to some conclusions:

Align Your Voice Appropriately

What I mean by this is that you may and should use different voices for different marketing functions.  For instance, if you have a blog and a sales page or pages you will likely have two different things going on.  Sales pages are designed to inform and sell a product or service.  Blogs are designed to inform and build relationships.  And while you may use your blog to give product information or announce a sale, the primary purpose should be to connect with your customer and build a relationship.

Another example might be the voice you use for your advertising copy and your existing customer list copy.  Your advertising copy is generally designed to attract new customers and may appear in the yellow pages, on Google or as a direct mail piece.  Your existing customer list is designed to enhance your relationship with the customer.  They serve different functions and therefore will have different voices.

Determine Your Core Voice(s)

Decide in advance how you want to be perceived.  Your Marketing Plan of Attack (MPA) will help you with this exercise.  Keep that in front of you as begin to write down some key words or phrases that exemplify what you want your customer to perceive when they read your blog or advertising or product copy.  Use your MPA to make sure those key words and phrases align with your positioning statements and with your target market.  Words like pretty and cute don’t fly with 40-year old men who drive BMWs.

You’ll have to do this exercise with each type of copy you have.  If you run ads, have a blog and write for trade magazines, you’ll need to do three different exercises.  They may be very similar but they won’t likely be the same.

Ask questions to help the brainstorming process.

Do I want my customers to connect with me as a person or with an entity?
Think IRS (entity) vs. Seth Godin (person).

Do I want my customers to feel a specific emotion when they visit my site?
Think Cadillac (luxury) vs. Nissan Cube (hip)

How do I want my customers to perceive me as a person?
Think Naomi Dunford (potty mouth) vs.  Lady Gaga (sex pot)

How do I want my customers to perceive me as a business?
Think I Can Has Cheez Burger (fun) vs. Google (simple)

All in all remember that there is no right or wrong way to communicate, only better aligned ways to communicate.  For each business and for each person the voice will be different.

It is those differences that help us, as consumers, to pick through the clutter and find the right voices for us.  Your goal as a marketer is to do your best to resonate with your customers, to build trust and to build like, to inform and to persuade.  There’s a lot going on when we set out to communicate but having a plan or ideas about what we hope our customers will hear will get you there faster.

Do you use a special voice or even a character when you communicate with your customers?  Do you set out to convey specific perceptions or emotions?  Share your thoughts with us!