Do You Make This Mistake In Your Advertising?

You know what the cardinal sin of marketing is? 

Being Booooorrrrinnggggggg! 

And there is nothing in the world more boring, than reading material that ‘waffles’. 

By the time you're done reading this article, I’ll have opened your third eye for spotting ‘waffle’ and you’ll know exactly how to eradicate it from your writing 

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How To Recognise And Terminate Your Waffling

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First, let’s play a game called ‘Spot The Waffle’. I’ll show you 3 sentences. You pick which one waffles. Sound fair enough? 

O.K. Here they are:  

The meeting will be held at five and what will be discussed is “the sorry state of business writing.”

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“I’m reaching out to you because we've been in the process of developing a new marketing system geared towards the generation of leads for home service businesses.“

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“I know you’re probably busy and I don’t want to take too much of your time since your schedule is probably packed.”

Now, which one is the waffling sentence?

That’s a trick question: It's all of them. 

Why? Because they’re packed full of so much passive, weak, neutered language, that point of the sentence has lost all its meaning by the time it finishes. 

Seriously, if you’re trying to write an effective sales message, and it's riddled with this kind of blabber, you’re shooting yourself in both feet. 

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Cutting Through The Clutter Using The “Money” Test

So let me show you an easy test to spot filler that will always work with whatever you’re writing. 

Whenever you’ve finished writing something, I want you to read over it twice. Once just to check there are no typos, and another being a normal reading with this one catch:

Put a £1 value, for every word you have on that message.

And I mean it. Every. Single. One. 

Now, when you read it again, how much ‘money’ are you throwing away on dead phrases and words that don’t need to be there? How much cheaper can you make it while still getting the message across? 

And just to show you how this test works in real-time, let’s apply it to those waffling examples I showed earlier:

The meeting will be held at five and what will be discussed is ‘the sorry state of business writing.”

LAMEEEE.  Let’s fix it:

The meeting’s at five. Subject: "the sorry state of business writing.”

See how that gets to the point so much quicker, AND is much cheaper? 

Another one:

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“I’m reaching out to you because we've been in the process of developing a new marketing system geared towards the generation of leads for home service businesses.“⠀

I guarantee that any prospect you send that to isn’t reading anymore of your message beyond that sentence.Let’s clean it up: 

“Reaching out because we generate leads for home service businesses. Would this be something of interest?”⠀

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To the point. Concise. Cost effective as well. 

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Last one:

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“I know you’re probably busy and I don’t want to take too much of your time since your schedule is probably packed.”

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That's a whole round of drinks on just 1 sentence! But, this is easy to fix. Look:

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“.”

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That’s it! That entire sentence does absolutely nothing. The irony is you would take up even more of his time anyway just by saying that. So just get straight to the point. 

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The Death Of Waffling

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Now you know how to spot waffling, let’s stop using passive language in our writing. Let’s stop being so careful, so timid, using castrated language.

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Write like you’re breaking down doors, kicking down fences, storming the barricades.

Make your writing loud. Make it bold. Be like the Rambo of business writing. 

IF you do this, just be prepared for when your sales go through the roof. 

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Take it easy,

Daniel ⠀

P.S. Want to know how I’d make sure we’d eradicate waffling and keep your prospects glued to their screen, unable to stop consuming your content?

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Get in touch with my agency today. If we’re a good fit I will personally take a look at your company and your marketing, come up with a strategy of what I’d do differently and discuss it with you in depth on a call.

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No cost, no obligation.

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If you want to work together I’ll tell you exactly how that works, if you don’t want to work together that’s fine too. No hard selling, no pressure, no annoying sales tactics.

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Sounds good? Then fill out this form: https://www.gilbertadverts.com/get-in-touch