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Today I want to share with you 2 things that you should never do/include in your sales or marketing message, if you want to get more customers to your business.

To prove my point, I’m going to share with you two examples of what NOT to do.

I saw a billboard recently on a major freeway.  It read “Texting While Driving KILLS”.  Then down below in fine print were the words “For more driving tips, text ‘SAFETY’ to 79191.”  Now I’m sure you are probably laughing or at least smiling right now because this is an obvious case of sending a mixed message.  And you’re right, I’m sure it is very clear to you why this message is ineffective.  But the sad part is – this type of miscommunication or presentation of conflicting ideas is seeping in and polluting your sales and marketing materials every day.  To get more customers to your business, you have to stop making this costly mistake.

Take for example your website, your eNewsletter or your brochure/catalog.  What exactly are you asking your prospect or customer to do?  Did you make the mistake of trying to cram 3 or 4 competing requests onto one page?  Did you ask them to buy your product, join your database, visit your blog and watch your latest video? Chances are, you got really excited about what you do and you wanted to share everything you could on just that one tiny page.  And I can understand why you got excited but you confused your audience and most of them walked away because what you wanted them to do wasn’t clear.

Now what you did may not have been as blatant as “For more driving tips, text ‘SAFETY’ to 79191.”  However, the end result was the same.

If you want to get more customers and prospects to your business, you need to focus on communicating one clear message.  If your message is clear and there is only one action that they could take, you will find that the number of people who step forward and take that desired action will go up dramatically.

Now that brings me to my second point.

The second mistake I don’t want you make is to use words or sentences that are confusing.  Take for example this sign I saw outside a motel – “Free Wifi Starting at $59.99”.  I think the motel owner who put up this sign was either in a rush or ran out of space because he forgot a few important words.  What he probably meant to say was “Free Wifi.  Rooms starting from $59.99”.  He only forgot two small words but those simple words made the difference between a message that was clear and one that made absolutely no sense at all.

Now you may not be offering free wifi but I bet you may have used or at least seen terms like “scalable architecture”, “a customer-centric model”, “ holistic approach” or “results-based focus”.  These words mean nothing to the reptilian brain (the part of your customer’s brain that decides and takes action).  That part of the brain is 45million years old and it struggles to process and understand complex words, numbers, unfamiliar symbols and graphs that contain too much information.  If you want to speed up the decoding process and make it easier to get more customers to your business, you need to make your message simple. Choose words that are clear and easy to understand.  Complete your thoughts and sentences – don’t make it difficult and give your customer the excuse – “I need to think about it”. If your customer has too think too hard to decode your  message, he simply won’t make a decision

Now I want you to be honest with yourself – is there a chance you might be sending mixed messages to your potential customers? Are your sales/marketing messages clear and succinct?  If not, now is the best time to go back and re-write your materials.  If you want to get more customers to your business, you need to simplify what you are asking them to do and use language that is easy to interpret.