Most of us have read some old-fashioned marketing speak in our lives. It might have been authentic, straight from the pages of an ancient newspaper from a previous century, full of outlandish promises. It’s more likely to have been an awkwardly composed advertisement, brash and unconvincing and probably advertising a ‘hurry-must-go-now’ sale. We all know instinctively that such advertising language no longer works, and yet businesses still make the mistake of using it every day.

There’s a reason most SEO experts advocate straightforward language for your search engine optimisation content. Anything other has less chance of working. Getting your SEO company involved in the writing of your content is a good way to ensure the right tone, and you can talk to us at SEO Consult. If you want the visitors that your SEO attracts from the search engine results pages to stay, you need to learn how to market without marketing.

The newspaper experiment

A simple experiment showed exactly how well people react to obvious advertising language. An advertisement from the 1900s for a health oil product was submitted to various newspapers. The advertisement used the usual language of the time, guaranteeing a cure for toothache and headache pain, listing the age ranges that could use the product and assuring the reader that the product was entirely safe. The newspapers it was submitted to ranged from local to national. Not a single one of them accepted the content.

The rejection may have come from hardened news makers, but the reason behind it comes from the masses. Making outlandish promises simply doesn’t work any more. Modern internet users are so cynical about advertising techniques that even providing support for your assertions doesn’t help. In fact, it might just hinder your efforts to promote your business. The trend of using customer endorsements to sell cheap, low-quality products means that even customer recommendations are of little value to you. A better answer is to avoid marketing language altogether.

Finding 1 chance in 100

A study of marketing messages showed that on average, internet users are exposed to over 500 new marketing messages every week. Of all of the marketing messages users are exposed to, new and old, only one percent sinks in.

Most businesses respond to this fact by trying to beat their competitors at their own game. This accounts for the hundreds of sites that try to sell right from the home page. Competing on this level is a less than smart way to go, considering how effective, or not effective, outright sales talk is. In order to get a better chance of catching that one percent of attention, you’re much better off presenting your business in a unique way.

When planning out the content of your site, listen to your SEO consultant and to the advice Google doles out constantly. Rather than concentrating on your marketing message, concentrate on your site’s users and what they need. This will provide you with the right angle to catch their attention.

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