A lot of companies and organizations wonder how to get rid of copywriting jargon on their marketing collateral. Copywriting jargon refers to copy that is filled with unnecessary big words and punctuation. It’s very simple:
Lose the fancy words.
Immediately.
On my About page, I wrote about my experience working with young people of various ages. What I didn’t mention is that I had to adapt the curriculum to different age groups and scenarios. I had to be clear about what I was trying to communicate. So, I couldn’t use words and concepts they didn’t understand or examples they weren’t even alive to understand. I had to keep it simple.
While this isn’t an explicit copywriting example, it is an example of what I mean by “lose the fancy words”. Could you imagine running a youth program and keyword stuffing meaningless words into the handouts?
The youth would leave and never come back.
How does this apply to your copywriting?
If I wanted to introduce myself to my past participants as their teacher, I wouldn’t say something like,
“It is our mission to enthusiastically facilitate economically sound methods of empowerment and continue to dramatically promote enterprise-wide testing procedures because that is what the customer expects.”
What does this even mean?
Nobody knows because the key message is lost in the jargon. Many people don’t even bother scanning text like this. Why? They are sure that even if they get to the end, whatever answer they were looking for won’t be there.
So, for your business, you don’t want to explain your product or service to people as if they aren’t people. For example, if you run an education technology company, you don’t want to describe your mission like this:
“Our mission is to continue to proactively provide access to team driven action items and also interactively enhance client-based scenarios so that we may authoritatively streamline premier process improvements to meet our customer’s needs.”
What does this even mean?!
Trying to figure it out would give anyone a headache. Don’t give your customers a headache.
There’s no secret, magical answer regarding how to get rid of fancy copywriting jargon. You simply need to get rid of the fluff.
People already don’t read walls of text online. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has meant people are consuming more information online, albeit short and digestible content. It’s safe to say people have very short attention spans.
Make your key message clear and choose your words wisely.
5 tips to get rid of copywriting jargon:
- Keep it concise and keep it moving
- Align all of your copy with what people are actually searching for
- Write how your customers talk
- Clarify, clarify, clarify
- Get to know your target audience very well
Ready to edit your copy and make your key messages shine?
Let’s get in touch and get started.