Language Choices and Reaching Your Audience
I was working with a client recently and talking to them about the language they wanted to use for their campaign, in response to language I had already drafted for them. I thought it would be helpful to share the conversation I had with them, in case it helped anyone else to understand these concepts a little more concretely.
When you think about the language to use, whether in your overall branding or a specific campaign, I want you to think about three different “buckets”:
First, there is the ideal language that we like to use
You might think of it being ideal for a number of reasons:
because it is technically correct or specific
it sounds best
it flows well
it is grammatically correct
An example of this might be that you are using technical industry standard terms. But who is the audience you are talking to? Is it other industry experts, or is it laypeople who you want to adopt your services or use/buy your product?
Second, there is the language that the defined target audience uses, understands and/or responds to
We need to meet the audience where are. This might mean:
not using industry standard terms at all, or at least not until they are familiar with the terms
using industry standard terms, but explaining them to laypeople in terms that reflects their level of understand and solving their needs
using the colloquial terms that your target audience would use instead of what you would use
intentionally writing to certain reading comprehension levels
Third, there is the language that is going to help us get the search engine results
When content goes online, most of the time it is with the hope that the right people will find and read it. Language that will help with search engine results is intentionally choosing words or phrases that will help the business show up at all or move up higher on the list of when someone searches for something on google and google pulls up the pages of results.
And then, even beyond those three considerations, we also have to match our tone and vocabulary to the brand voice as well. So, it’s important to think about all of these factors when crafting written messaging. If this isn’t something that you or anyone in your organization has the capacity for, this is something that you can hire someone to craft these messages for you.