Your Customer's Language

So we're sitting around the dinner table with some semi-famous designers and my friend, who sometimes blurts things out without thinking - blurts something out without thinking.    She cleverly covered her tracks by commenting - "I sometimes suffer from Tibet Syndrome."

Tibet Syndrome?

Her quick-witted boyfriend jumped to her rescue claiming, "Yes, that's when you can't stop blurting expletives at the Dalai Lama."

My friend gave me a confused look.

"it's Tourrette's Syndrome" I hissed.

How are your customer's butchering your terminology?    I work with a lawyer whose clients often search on "statue of limitation"   not "statute of limitations".  But their in site search engine is set up to deliver relevant results even if the term is not entered correctly.

At Future Now, we pay a lot of attention to the language our customers use and have created persuasive scenarios based on that language.   We have customers who are very comfortable with the industry "lingo".  They describe their need as:

"I need to increase our conversions rates.  I want measurable ROI.   Can you do a conversion assessment analysis of my website?"

Yet other customers, who need the exact same service may describe their need like this:

"Help - my website is broken.  Can you fix it?" 

In the case of the later, we created a Google Adword campaign targeting the keyword "fix website".    We tested several versions, but the ad that worked the best was simply:

"Future Now can fix your website by increasing conversion rates."

We simply repeated the customer's language right back at them including the search term in the headline.   Yes, we added "conversion rates" which we probably didn't even need, but it was good for relevance since "conversion" was in the header of the landing page.   

If we had more time, we could probably create a custom landing page, but in this case, we took visitors to the page promoting the service that would best fit their needs.  We were careful in the copy to speak to both the more sophisticated, later in the buying process visitor with terminology like ROI and "conversion assessment analysis".

But we were also careful to use verbiage like "we use plain spoken language with simple visuals" for our "fix my website" visitor.

Find out what verbiage your customers use to describe their wants/needs/opportunities/solutions.    Mine your customer service people.   Talk to your sales people.  Get out there yourself and have mini-discussion groups.  Visit consumer generated media like blogs and discussion boards.   

Understanding your customer's Angle of Approach is key to building persuasive scenarios.

Comments

[Julia Dorofeeva]

Our customers are the prior reasons to use some incorrect descriptions or words to give them relevant search results.

We should understand that the whole process depends on the words and should study the terns our clients use to determine our service or products.

[Kristopher Gawron]

An effective marketing plan must be customer-oriented. Yes, understanding the customers' language is very crucial in crafting efficient marketing strategies.