Less Shouting = More Listening
The exclamation point is getting a serious workout these days.
Let’s talk about communication.
The whole point of communication is to successfully convey information. And while the message itself is important, the way that it’s delivered is just as critical.
There are three “events” in the successful delivery of a message. The first event is transmission: the delivery of your message. The second event is reception: when your message arrived, it was received by the party for which it was intended. The third event is comprehension: when your recipient received the message, they understood it. If any of those three events fails, your message did not get conveyed successfully.
We spend a lot of time talking about “targets” for marketing, but that implies that all you have to do is send your message to be successful. But we already know that’s not the case. There are two more events that have to take place first.
The sender of a message can only control the first event. So as a sender, you want to do everything you can to make sure the other two events actually happen. You have to craft a message you think will resonate with your recipient, and then you have to make sure it’s something they’ll understand.
So if the goal is to form relationships and make connections, then your messages should be conducive to that.
When you’re trying to make friends, don’t use the least-friendly punctuation
Marketing is very much about making friends of sorts with consumers. When you address them, you try to speak to them in a conversational tone, so it feels more like talking and less like marketing. Once you start talking “at” a consumer, you’re going to have less luck with events two and three.
When it comes to punctuation, if a period is for talking, and a question mark is for questioning, what is an exclamation point for? Yelling? Shouting? These aren’t the tools we use to form relationships and build trust when we’re face to face, yet marketers of all stripes feel compelled to fill their written headlines and copy with a seemingly endless parade of exclamation points.
In a word, stop. If you’re trying to “get through” to a consumer, shouting is certainly not the way to do it. Consumers get yelled at all day long already. When you really want to get someone’s attention, think quieter. Make them lean in a little to hear you.
How do you communicate a secret? With a whisper. And when you whisper, the other person is completely tuned in to you and focused on what you’re saying. Isn’t that what you want from consumers?
We’re all in the business of filtering out messages we don’t need to pay attention to. The louder a message is, the easier it is to dismiss it. Quiet creates curiosity. Shouting makes people uncomfortable. Keep that in mind when you’re choosing your punctuation, and you’ll have more success in forming those critical bonds of trust with your audience.