Crafting Messages That Don't Exaggerate

Let’s make this short and sweet. Here’s a list of words and phrases you should strike from your vocabulary when marketing your product or service. Even if the terms are accurate. And if they are accurate, you don’t get to use them – leave that to quotes from the press or your customers.

1. Best, Number 1, Top, Market Leading, Revolutionary. These are all tired and over-used. Plus, when you use them yourself, your prospects won’t believe you. They will, however, be interested if someone OTHER than you uses these terms, and if they do, quote them.
2. The ONLY _blank_ you’ll ever need. You’re not Billy Mays, may he rest in peace. You’re not pitching your product at a county fair or in an informercial. If you are, go for it, but for all else, drop it.
3. New and Improved! Please limit this phrase to selling laundry soap.
4. Amazing. Put that word in your spell checker and set the correction to be “unsubstantiated.”
5. Turnkey. Unless your product actually has a key, and all users have to do is turn it, don’t use this hackneyed term. Even the simplest, easiest to use product requires some thought and action from the user. The iPod is a thing of beauty, but until you figure out how to hook it up to your computer and import your music, it’s not turnkey. I spent ten minutes in a diner recently, explaining to the waitress how to use her new iPhone. No one had told her she’d need to connect it to her computer before she could download any aps or music (you have to set up an iTunes account, which for some bizarre reason, you can’t do directly from the device).
6. Best-of-Breed. So, you’re telling me that there are lots of other products in this category? Maybe customers should consider them too and decide for themselves which is best. Your customers might be satisfied with a runner up or a mutt. Don’t start a metaphor you can’t control.

In general, refrain from hyperbole. You need to look for it in your customers’ praise as well. They often want to please you and will resort to exaggerated claims that you are the greatest thing since sliced bread, and other statements like that, but what they really do is create distance and distrust between you and your prospects.

If you want to strengthen your marketing and build a reputation as a company that customers can trust, you’ll need to start with your marketing vocabulary. You can’t disguise a “just as good” product with jargon. If you sell exactly the same thing at exactly the same price as everyone else, you’ll need to figure out why someone should buy from you rather than the other company. Frankly, marketers who resort to these overused terms and approaches are lazy and don’t really know what makes their product or service worth buying.