Marketing buzzwords I hate. And why small businesses should ignore them.
Before I harp on about this subject, which I’m overly passionate about, a disclaimer is needed: this focuses on small businesses only. We’re not talking about large conglomerates that need 100 person marketing team and have budgets of R1 mil upwards. We’re talking about Jo Soap, who's just started his mechanic business in the back of his folk’s yard.
Marketing jargon is a particularly difficult beast to get around. So much work goes into knowing what people are talking about - what is growth hacking vs growth marketing? What on earth do you mean by ‘go to market?’ The industry specialises in trying to sound clever, instead of being useful.
For small businesses, this is a problem. If you’re investing in learning about marketing to better your business, you can get bogged down by these terms and ideas. As a small business owner, you don’t have time for waffle and you certainly don’t have the budget to invest in convoluted strategies that are more suited to large franchises. You don’t need jargon that adds work without adding sales.
Here’s a list of marketing words that look impressive on a slide but do absolutely nothing for your bottom line. These are my personal pet peeves. Let me know yours on my socials!
Learnings
This makes me gril.
“Learnings” is not grammatically correct. Learning is already a noun. Turning it into a plural does not make you sound experienced. It makes you sound like you’re trying to impress people with your jargon.
It usually raises its head when things haven’t gone the way you expected and so, at least you learnt something along the way (AKA, failed, but are trying to put a positive spin on it). “Our learnings are…” followed by observations that could have been spotted in five minutes.
If you learned something useful, say what it is. There’s no need for adding an ‘s’ to an already useful word. Yes, it’s important to do research and testing, but you don’t have to make up words to make it sound more impressive.
Holistic
The people who use this term are right up there with people who use ‘bandwidth’ when referring to their work capacity, or a middle aged dude trying to sound cool by saying ‘indeed.’
The thing that annoys me about ‘holistic’ is it’s pure common sense. Of course your marketing should be ‘holistic.’ It should work together. Your website, social, ads, and emails should not be fighting each other.
People use “holistic” when they want credit for doing the obvious. Small businesses do not need a fancy word to describe basic coordination.
360 degree
This one is pure fantasy.
No small business is doing 360 degree marketing. We simply don’t have the time or money. We’re doing what we can afford and, if we’re doing it well, we’re doing it where our customers actually are.
Small businesses have limited time and energy. Pretending otherwise just sets unrealistic expectations and unnecessary pressure. Pick the channels that bring sales. Ignore the rest.
Source of truth
Firstly, this essentially means this is where the correct data is. It bugs me. Just say ‘go here.’ Don’t harp on a about a ‘single source of truth.’
Additionally, having documents and spreadsheets with inaccurate data in them leaves a huge room for human error. I get that sometimes we use different sheets for different data, but, just call it the ‘master’ document if you like, or ‘official data doc’ etc. ‘Source of truth’ just sounds shwarmy.
Pillars
Being a small business in SA is about action. Spending hours creating content ‘pillars,’ (which, by the way, is just a fancy way of saying ‘categories’) is a waste of time.
Essentially, they’re categories that your content should fit into - the main culprits being: educational, inspirational, behind the scenes, sales, and, my least favourite, thought leadership.’
The issue with these pillars is that you risk losing out on great content, because you got stumped figuring out which ‘pillar’ it fits into.
Ok, let’s get to the fun stuff, here’s a list of buzzwords that I hear daily and what they actually mean.
| Buzzword | What it actually means |
|---|---|
| Bootstrapped | Broke |
| Thought leadership | Look at me content |
| Value add | Basic effort |
| Leverage | Use |
| Circle back | Avoid it for now |
| Touch base | Another pointless meeting |
| Deep dive | Drag it out |
| What good looks like | Goal |
| Objectives | Goal |
| OKRs | Goal |
| North star | Goal (can we not just say 'goal?') |
| Blue sky thinking | Not happening |
| Move the needle | Do something |
| Run it up the flagpole | Not my decision |
| Park this for now | Ignore it politely |
| Bandwidth | I’m busy. Find someone else. |
| Align | Forced agreement |
I’m sure you’ve related to a few of these. But the main point stands - what is worth listening to for a small South African business?
The next time someone says “let’s align on our holistic, full funnel strategy and define what good looks like”, just ask one question:
Is this going to bring in sales?
If the answer is no, you know exactly what to do with it.
Want tailored advice that doesn’t beat around the bush?
Hit me up:
📧 sez@sezdg.com
📲 WhatsApp: +27 67 601 0605
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