Carbon Footprint Gets Added to the Dictionary – and how that can help your marketing success
Filed under Green Products, Marketing
I was surprised to hear that Merriam Webster was just adding Carbon Footprint and Green Collar to the dictionary this week. It seems to me that they have been in use for a very long time. It then occured to me that doesn’t mean however, that my customers respond the same way to these phrases. The question here for marketers is what language does your audience speak?
Becoming official and being added to the dictionary doesn’t’ mean a word or phrase isn’t commonly used and recognized. It just reminded me that as marketers we often forget that we are not necessarily our customers, and need to keep that in mind with every communication.
The best marketing resonates with customers and makes them feel we are speaking directly to them. Miss the mark with language that seems foreign to them or like jargon and you can alienate them.
Its easy to lose perspective of whether a term or phrase is jargon or has moved into common usage with our audience, particularly if you live, breath and work in a niche. It’s your job to be up to date on trends, news…and you are probably a bit ahead of most of your audience, making it hard to keep it all in perspective. That is not to say there aren’t very savvy audiences out there on the cutting edge. The key is to really know your audience.
Social media such as blogs and twitter give us an incredible opportunity to have ongoing conversations in real time with our audience and read exactly what words and terms they speak/write in.
The real question for marketers is not when does a term become official, but when is it commonly used and accepted into the familiar language our target audience speaks.
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Tags: Add new tag, carbon footprint, environmental leader, green collar, green marketing, green products, social media marketing, sustainable marketing
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