Power of Jargon

Most of you do use jargon in your everyday language, even if you don't realise it. You may use plié to talk about a balance step in ballet, dig to talk about a defensive contact following an opponent's attack resulting in a playable ball in a volleyball game, CPR to talk about an emergency procedure which is attempted in an effort to return life in person in cardiac arrest. And again what is cardiac arrest? It is definitely not an arrest by an officer with a badge stating "cardiac". Words or phrases like them seem highly crucial to some fields, but talking to others that do not belong to that field does not help in making them understand exactly what you are talking about.

Lets use the following scenario: You are an athlete that is experiencing some health issues and you've decided to do some blood exams. After a week of waiting you get them in an envelope with red ink stating MVP.You suddenly feel great.. I mean, you have been recognised by your own doctor authority as the Most Valuable Player and you are unaware that what MVP means is actually Mitral Valve Prolapse: the most common heart valve abnormality, affecting five to ten percent of the world population.. That would have been a serious outcome.

What does this has to do with marketing? Just think of the ROI(marketing jargon for Return on Investment) of an advertising campaign stating that you have CRM, CMS systems for small-medium companies. This has the same outcome as advertising the "La vache qui rit" brand in French, in Thailand; they will never realize that the ad is not about a funny looking French cow but about a cheese in the shape of a triangle which is cool to consume. Jargon work as a foreign language, and those that are not native speakers or have not undertaken a course to learn that foreign language it will all sound like Greek to them.

But come on! CRM, and CMS are highly professional software that do aim to help an organisation excel better!!! You are right BUT that organisation may not know your language.. your jargon. They know that they need a system to manage their content (which translates to CMS- content management system) and an ad speaking the customer-language will have better results.

Summing up, before doing a campaign, contacting your potential customers by sending those millions of emails hoping that at least 10% will result in a sale, think about your CUSTOMER, their jargon language and then yours. If it is not at the same level then think about other ways to promote it: use your customer's language instead.

The power of marketing!