Want to engage more of your target audience?
Photo-by-Tijs-van-Leur-on-Unsplash
Want to increase customer engagement? You need to start by speaking their language. Here we explore how you can do that and at which stages of ad and concept development you can do it.
Start by getting on the same page
Excuse my ignorance but…
I’m not an accountant and I’m not in finance so when my accountant sprouts something jargonny, I generally don’t know what he’s talking about.
Typically, my replies go along the lines of “excuse my ignorance but what does XXX mean?”
This sort of power balance (or lack thereof) does nothing to build relationships. It keeps the distance between us, with the accountant as the expert and me, the lowly customer. It makes me feel stupid asking for clarity. Sometimes I don’t even bother because I think he’ll think it’s a stupid question and for some reason I care about how stupid (or not!) he thinks I am. For some reason, I want to come across as informed and knowledgable.
And I am.
Just not in his field.
If he used less jargonny language or explained things upfront, instead of having conversations about what he means, we could get to the higher level discussions about the implications for my business sooner, which is what we both actually want to talk about.
I’m not telling you this to point fingers at my accountant.
I’m sharing this anecdote because it happens so often, and not just in one-on-one conversations about accounts, but in mass advertising and on websites too. Many of us, myself included, are culprits of it.
It comes from looking inwards and using YOUR language, rather than talking to your customers and finding out what their language is. This is mostly a company-culture thing, driven first by the ‘powers that be’, but strong marketing and insight leads can change the direction of an inward focus to an outward focus by bringing the customer into more strategic conversations.
This is more than just doing an ad test to check that consumers understand your language, it’s an ethos and it stems from having a customer champion. Different companies will give that role different titles, but it boils down to the same thing:
Knowing the customer so well that they can be the customer voice when customers can’t be present.
It comes from:
giving a sh*t about the customer
wanting to know about them
immersing themselves in their world
deeply understanding their challenges, needs, issues
knowledge of how they shop the category
asking questions. ALL. THE DAMN. TIME.
And then testing, testing, testing. There are so many opportunities to catch yourself when or if you haven't spoken their language.
Before you produce anything, explore how your target audience speaks and what they respond to, not only amongst themselves but also from brands.
For example, is your target audience Gen Z and Millenials? Don't be fooled by the perception that they speak in emoticons and slang! They *might* to each other, but some evidence suggests that they don't respond to that in brand communications.
Test when you have an idea that is still a concept. At this point, testing also helps inform whether the idea responds to a genuine need or issue they have and whether the idea resonates.
Test once you've got a worked-up idea but before going into full-scale production. Why wouldn't you test it before you spend money finalising production.
Test the final version before launching and establishing whether it’s still speaking their language and whether they understand what is being said. Rather catch yourself before you've launched, even if there are additional production costs to tweak your copy, than launch with copy that doesn't resonate and leads to poor engagement.
*How well do your ad and concept tests reflect this important side of communications?*
The more conversations that are had with customers, the more you can speak their language and adjust your jargon to reflect not only their needs, but also the way they speak. Once you have this, you can be a lot more confident about which of your communications are more likely to have an impact and achieve the objectives you set for them.
And when all else fails, Keep It Simple Stupid. You can’t go too far wrong with that strategy.
