The week I stopped dumbing down our security language on the website

For about a year I pushed my team to remove all jargon from our marketing copy. I thought we needed to sound approachable to small business owners. Then last Tuesday a prospect called me directly and said he couldn't tell what we actually did differently from five other vendors. He quoted our own tagline back to me as a question. That call lasted 47 minutes and by the end I realized we had sanded off every edge that made us unique. Now I lead with technical specifics and just put a glossary link for the new terms. Has anyone else found a middle ground between being clear and being too watered down?

3 comments

3 Comments

wendysanchez20d agoMost Upvoted

Ngl the real trick might be matching the language to where the customer actually is in their buying journey, not just picking one tone for the whole site. A total newbie needs different words than someone who's already narrowed it down to three vendors.

taylorellis20d ago

Remember when I was trying to buy a snowblower last winter... I literally had to leave three different websites because they were all using the same technical jargon for the comparison shoppers, but I was still Googling "what size snowblower do I need for a 50 foot driveway." One site had a little quiz at the top that asked a few questions first, and it ended up being the one I bought from. Kind of wild how much easier it made things for someone who had no clue what they were doing yet.

gavinb9720d ago

Right? That little quiz thing is genius, lol. I had the same thing trying to buy a pressure washer last summer - every site was throwing around PSI and GPM like I just knew what that meant, and one place just asked "what are you cleaning?" and "how big's your deck?" and boom, it sent me to one model. @wendysanchez is totally right about matching the language to where you're at, it's wild how much smoother the whole thing goes when the site just holds your hand through the obvious stuff. Makes you wonder why more places don't do it.