One of the biggest mistakes a company can make is to forget who they are talking to. This is commonly referred to “talking to yourself.” In the end, it is the customer whom you need to communicate to. But frequently with decent-sized companies the marketing messages become self-serving and only make sense to internal audiences. Great when sending out the company-wide memo. Not so great when you are trying to actually talk to people outside your organization.

It’s no surprise why this happens. Brand managers and product managers live and breathe their line of business. That’s great. The problem is that’s all they live and breathe because that’s all they are given information about. Many times the organization’s silo-ed structure prevents managers from gaining insight to the overall brand strategy or big picture initiatives.
The result, in the form of a creative brief, may still have the customer benefit in mind, it just has a cornucopia of internal-speak data to back it up.

There are a number of ways to prevent this type of “talking to yourself” message.

1. Avoid Acronyms
Acronyms are created to make ideas, products, and services easier to communicate. But this only works when the person hearing or reading it knows how to decipher them. When using acronyms in customer touch points, make sure you describe the meaning of them immediately followed by the acronym itself. From there you can refer to it as the acronym with no confusion. For instance: “Digital Asset Manager (DAM)”

Note: Make sure the acronym has meaning. Unless it is an abbreviation for a proprietary product or an industry-known term, keep the acronyms for your internal decks.

2. Don’t Pat Yourself on the Back Too Hard
Again, you and your agencies understand the business. You understand the competition and you understand the trends in the industry. But customers do not. They only care about you understanding their pain points and offering a solution to address them. Any type of announcements or self-promotion should be reserved for instances where it adds to the credibility of your offering. For instance if you are selling widgets, it is ok to promote the award you won for the best Widget maker in the world. It is not advisable to promote the “Richest CEO in the World” title.

3. Don’t Assume Customer Knowledge, Understand Your Target
Your potential customers may not even know they need your services. They may not be aware your product exists. Don’t ever assume the customer is up to speed with everything you do or everything that exists in the marketplace.

But here is where it gets tricky. You do not want to talk down to someone either. Finding that delicate balance and talking appropriately to the audience is all about understanding who you are talking to. The conversation you would have about widgets will differ drastically between the CEO and the widget warehouse foreman.

4. Remember What Your Customer Has Seen
You may be sending out marketing messages about your complete line of products but not every customer is seeing it all. You may have versioned your communications to address specific vertical market concerns. Or, you may have offered special promotional pricing to existing customers but not to new ones.

Take care in understanding who saw what and when. This will avoid bombarding your target with conflicting messaging.

5. Pressure Test
Great client/agency relationships can breed great results, a like-minded partnership, and realistic goal-setting. But it is always important to pressure test your work outside the vacuum. Focus group it, share it with spouses, or share it with colleagues on different accounts. They will be the ultimate test for how consumer-friendly your message truly is. It doesn’t have to be fancy, it just has to be done.

Avoid talking to yourselves! If you talk to your customers appropriately, you will get great results.

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