Don’t Take Shortcuts
Sean McGinnis is VP Sales and Marketing at Dot CO Law Marketing. Additionally, Sean is a co-founder of 12 Most and blogs about SEO, Internet Marketing, Social Media, Leadership and a variety of other topics at his blog 312 Digital. Sean is based in Chicago and has been involved in Internet Marketing since 1999.
I’m a huge movie buff. In fact, the first web site I ever created was a DVD movie review site (http://dvdverdict.com) that it is still going strong over 12 years later with over 22,000 original movie reviews. One of the byproducts of this fascination with film is I tend to have strong recall of movie dialogue and scenes and I often find myself thinking in movie terms.
Just ask my friend Sam Fiorella. Just this week, Sam and I were chatting via skype and he sparked an immediate movie recall in my mind and I shot him a couple movie clips. We both laughed. I did the same thing to my friends Gini Dietrich and Marcus Sheridan this past week, when I dropped a quick YouTube clip into the Spin Sucks comment stream. I do it because it’s funny and because it adds spice to the discussion.
And here’s the problem….
Every time I do that, I’m taking a shortcut.
I assume everyone knows what I know – that they think like I think – that everyone “gets it” – that they’re in on the joke because they too have seen the movie and understand what I’m trying to convey by dropping in a movie line out of nowhere.
But that’s rarely ever true!
Communication shortcuts can be useful when you have a shared community and you’re certain everyone “gets it,” but they can be death to your marketing efforts. In fact, a sense of community can be strengthened by using just these types of shortcuts. Again, I would cite Gini’s community over at Spin Sucks as an example. Every few weeks or so, I or someone else will call Gini Gumby or Gertrude. It’s funny to me. And it’s funny to Gini. But not every member of her community knows the backstory (click both the links above to get brought into the loop) and those that don’t, get very much left out of the shared experience of being part of that community during those short exchanges. BUT, those in the know have their bonds and allegiances to that community strengthened via this type of shorthand communication. Everyone that knows the Gumby story has a good laugh when it comes back out.
Here’s the rub… There’s a temptation to apply this type of thinking to your marketing effort as well. But, your market very rarely understands your product (or maybe even their need) as well as you do. And by creating shorthand things like branded product names or concepts and continually referring to them in your marketing materials without first explaining them to your prospects can lead to a lot of things – almost none of them good. Your prospects will walk away from your marketing efforts feeling confused and alienated.
Here’s the thing. It’s fairly easy to avoid this type of behavior. All you need to do is put yourself in your prospect’s shoes. It sounds pretty easy in theory, but it’s quite difficult to apply in the real world. Because we can’t unlearn what we already know. We are often blinded by our own self-interests – which is why sales people are often so incredibly bad – because they are focused on their own self-interests and not genuinely focused on the interests of their customers.
Nearly every time you try to take a shortcut you run the risk of alienating your market. Don’t talk down to them. Don’t talk over their heads. Don’t even talk TO them. Instead, talk WITH them. Discover the genuine questions they have about your product or service and answer those questions as completely and naturally as possible. Display a little empathy. It will go a long way in helping you put your market first.
So my advice is this. Beware the shortcut. It can be a VERY effective tactic, but it also has a tendency to limit your market – by creating those that are in the inner circle and those that are forever relegated to being on the outside looking in. Both are viable tactics. Just know which one makes the most sense for your business and when to use it.
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Great advice Sean – take shortcuts with our friends but not with our market (at least until we know them as well as we know our friends!).
Can you please tell that to my children when they speak to me in ‘Star Wars’ language!
Cathy
Haha! Too funny Cathy! My 5 year old continues to run around humming the Indiana Jones theme song. Duh duduhdah Dududaaaa Du duhduhdaaa Duhdadadada! LOL
This was the battle with my old job Sean. They wanted to be “social media experts’ so badly that they never considered that NOBODY hires experts unless you are a lawyer trying a case.
I kept trying to tell them that they were using the wrong terms – but they wanted it their way. That insistence on being right was its own shortcut. It can take a lot of work to find out what terms people actually use – and they wanted the white robe without earning it.
As far as shortcuts in speaking and ‘in jokes” are concerned, many times when I first started commenting at Spin Sucks, I felt like an outsider. I really try to stay away from those in jokes too much because I know how hard it can be to really get to know someone.
That is my .02 for what its worth.
Thanks for the great post Sean.
I’ve REALLY struggled with this Nancy. It’s so GREAT to have that “insider” lingo that we find funny and to chat in those terms, but it really does shut people out… a lot.
As I cut my social media teeth while hanging out in the #UsGuys stream a lot, we heard a LOT of criticism that our insider lingo was off-putting and cliquish. I disagreed strongly at the time, because I knew many of the people in that group to be warm and inviting, friendly and knowledgeable. But if there are hurdles to a noob’s ability to see that warmth and knowledge, what good is it?
To this day I struggle with this. I think the insider lingo actually STRENGTHENS bonds within a community. I mean few can argue with the amazing success that Gini has on her blog. I still wonder how many people show up there, start to read the comments, want to say something and yet do not because they feel like the people that are there are “too tight”. I doubt that happens often, but we may never know because they’re silent about it.
I also draw a line between the language we use to market our services and products and the language we use when communicating to our customers (or other community). They can and should be different I believe, at least to a degree.
Thanks for making me think, even more… Of course you do that a lot. 🙂
Sean, I guarantee that there are people who are put off by the banter and inside jokes at Gini’s blog, but that doesn’t mean that I think it should stop.
Some people will look at that and see it as exclusive and others will hope to become a part of it. In interim the banter does help strengthen the community and creates a core group that always shows up. That core group is critical but that is a topic for a different day.
In regard to your post it reminds me of a conversation I had several years ago. I flew into Dallas for a business trip and opened up the conversation with a quip about how 9-11 had made business travel so much harder than in the past.
That was my shortcut and how I thought I would build a rapport. In most cases it works quite well but in that one it bombed because the people in the room had all been in school during 9-11. They had a basic idea of what I was talking about but really didn’t get it because they hadn’t ever experienced it.
It was a mistake, but I learned from it.
I have spent most of my career in two industries that are the worst about using industry lingo on customers: banking and printing. Do you know what your DDA is? Have you experienced gas-ghosting or tail-slap yet? My job as a marketer is to represent the consumer, and I advocate to my clients to use language that the consumer would use. More about that here: http://www.getlucid.net/blog/2010/06/hickey-pickers-dot-gain-and-tail-slap/
Hi Kim! Can’t say I’m familiar with either of those two industries… but this is also rampant in our own internal jobs as well. Ever try to have a discussion with a CMO that’s not digital savvy? One that comes out of a brand marketing environment? Hahahah! SEO, SEM, PPC, CTR, long tail, Social? Ummm, right.
Then again, they have their own insider lingo as well (we all do, let’s face it).
This dovetails with a theory I have that the very best among us, no matter the job title, are more empathetic and able to intuit what their stakeholders require of them. The best salespeople, marketers, Customer Service peeps, CEOs, Project Managers etc…. I don’t care what your role is – if you understand what your team or customers require from you (right now) you are better equipped to excel in business.
Do you agree with that?
Kim,
I don’t know you but I always have my demand deposit account (DDA) number memorized! You made me smile today. Thank you.
Judy
Can’t thank you enough for putting this into words for me. I found this kind of relevant to a post I just read somewhere else not minutes ago. http://resonatesocial.com/social-media/call-to-action/
He mentioned building up your rapport with your community and tribes so that you could leverage your own words for a call to action. I see taking shortcuts as detrimental to your that rapport when you apply it to people that you don’t yet know.
However, I thought about how that becomes a problem when you’re a marketer speaking on behalf of your client. How are you going to have the time to build this relationship with your clients potential customers? The answer comes with leveraging the individuals in their community who are ALREADY networked and influential.
Thoughts?
Agreed completely. Finding advocates or brand champions who already live within that community can be a powerful tactic.
I think the other things this concept dovetails with is the way many marketers get lured in by tactics that scale. Having great discussions one on one that lure people into your community, or bring them up to speed on insider lingo is a tedious thing to do – no real scale present there, but it pays huge dividends. Perhaps that’s something better suited to a sales force or customer service team – it all depends on your organizational structure and how you’ve defined roles and responsibilities.
Also, I think it’s OK to have strong calls to action, but for them to work, you must have earned that action. ,You can do so in many ways, but the best way is to educate your prospective customer… lots of ways to do that of course. A CTA without having earned the request will fall on deaf ears. Right?
“A CTA without having earned the request will fall on deaf ears. Right?” Amen to that! I think anyone here would agree. Now to tell everyone else..
I like that we don’t get hyped up into thinking one way is necessarily better than any other way. One-to-one and scaling tactics both have their place, and it definitely matters how it fits into your business and your strategy.
Sean, this is an excellent piece of advice. I see the problem sometimes when writing website content for clients; they are intent on saying what they want to say, and not what their customers want to know, often to the point of chasing keywords which would never occur to the clients or customers they are trying to attract. As you say, the solution is simply enough, you just have to look at it from the customer point of view.