5 Ways to Simplify Your Message for All Audiences

Dealing with an audience can be a little more complicated than it seems. Often leaders of large corporations take their past experiences and the things they’ve already figured out for themselves and assume that the audience has already experienced similar things as well; which can create communication barriers and ruin their viewing experience, putting a bad or confused taste in their mouth for the company. When it comes to marketing to your customers, complexity is the demise of big corporations. If you don’t really know where to start when it comes to simplifying your message, just keep in mind these five objectives:

Find the Customer

Who do you want to hear your message? Make sure your language reflects the language of your audience. If you’re marketing to the upper management of fortune 500 business, use their jargon. Don’t dumb it down for someone who won’t appreciate it. On the flip side, if you’re marketing a product or service to regular old Americans, don’t make yourself look stupid, but keep in mind that about 70% of Americans have nothing higher than a GED.

Solve Their Problem

Obviously you have a service or product that will make somebody’s life a little easier. So let your audience know what pestering problem they have that will be solved. Laundry detergent companies don’t get anywhere by only saying “wash your clothes with this stuff!” They identify common problems like food, drink and grass stains and show the consumer how their product handles tough stuff like a champ.

Nurture the Customer

Flatter them, coddle them, let them know that within your company their voice is heard and is important. Tell them that if they don’t love your product, there is a way to get out of it and a platform for them to provide their welcome feedback. Make them feel that, even though they are one in the thousands of potential customers your company is marketing to, they are super important.

Make the Sale

This may seem like the most important objective, and it is pretty important, but if you disregard all the steps leading up to making the sale you’ll make very little sales. However, if you’ve done a good job at finding customers, solving their problems and making them feel special; include a call-to-action in your message. A call-to-action ensures that your viewer has all the information they need to contact you and either get more information or make a purchase. Not including a call-to-action is like listening to that friend recount second hand stories with no solid references. Sure, it’s a cool story, but who’s to say if it’s even real?

Deliver the Value

When your customer makes a purchase they are saying they trust you and expect your company to deliver on all your promises. Customers expect their service to come without hassles, or their product to come intact and work well; they also expect to have a voice if something goes wrong. No matter what your company is advertising – be it the best customer service, lifetime guarantees, or speedy shipping – simply deliver on that promise and your reputation will glow.

Large corporations tend to be very complicated, and often the message they try to convey ends up confusing to the customer. Over at Ydraw, we often have to deal with overly-complicated scripts given to us by big businesses that take a lot of revising. They are usually filled with company jargon, confusing phrasing and specific images that apply only to their organization. As a marketing video production company, it’s our job to make sure their message is easy for the average consumer to swallow; and if you’ve been working in your industry for a long time, it might be surprising to find how much editing goes in to making your message fun and above all: simple.