ˈmɑːkɪtɪŋ (Marketing)

I wouldn’t blame you if you thought I’d come up with the name for this blog by mashing my fists on my keyboard and hoping for the best. That’s not the case. What you see above is the word ‘MARKETING’ written in the International Phonetic Alphabet (hereinafter referred to as the ‘IPA’). The IPA is an alphabet of the spoken sounds of a given language or, in other words, it’s the pronunciation of letters and words in any language in written form. If you’re interested in learning more about the IPA and how the various spoken sounds we use are standardized, click here to see the system explained in full in a piece created by Antimoon.com.

This blog won’t actually be focused on the IPA, though. I chose to title this blog the way I have to emphasize something that I feel isn’t being given due importance in modern marketing— writing and spelling. Before I go on, I’m not claiming to have mastered the English language, by any means. It is my opinion that any language is impossible to master completely. There are simply too many words, rules, exceptions and too much continuous evolution to be found in any language. It just isn’t feasible to claim to know a language perfectly. Furthermore, I also realize that myriad people in 2018 speak 2, 3, sometimes even 4 languages, generally with great proficiency. It is completely understandable that some people struggle with writing in their 3rd or 4th language, especially at a professional level. As a matter of fact, I admire the people brave enough to do so. Living in The Hague has afforded me the opportunity to learn Dutch, albeit with a couple of gaps in my general grasp of the language. However, I’m not nearly brave enough to begin blogging or marketing in Dutch — I’ve still got a way to go before I begin to consider this possibility. Essentially, what I’m saying is that this blog isn’t a criticism of people writing in 2nd, 3rd or 4th languages, nor am I portraying myself as someone utterly and completely fluent in English.

Proper Spelling and Grammar in Marketing

With all that out of the way, I’ll get to my point — all companies need to maintain a high quality of writing and grammar, in all of their marketing efforts. This doesn’t just go for English marketing efforts. No matter what language your company operates in, no matter which linguistic demographic your company is trying to reach, there is no excuse for not ensuring that everything has been done to check, double-check and triple-check that your written content, online or otherwise, is free of error. For example, I proofread this blog 8 times before uploading it — after having re-written every part of. I realize that this might sound a little archaic, pretentious even, but I’m not writing this blog merely to opine without providing some form of justification — the importance of proper writing in business and marketing is a fact. My grandfather (a polyglot who knows Welsh, Latin and Danish, among other languages), always used to tell me: “If a job’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly”. To prove this, I’ve found and referred to an article on Businessworld.ie. The article highlights the importance of proper writing in business and for companies in general, but also touches on the same importance in marketing. Click here to read the article in full.

Almost all the points made in the article lend themselves perfectly to marketing in general. So much marketing these days happens online (often accompanied by images or videos). Quality images or videos are indeed what people will pay most attention to, but these, combined with quality writing, are one of the things that separate businesses with little/moderate growth to those with meteoric growth.

Focusing on businesses internally, the article states that proper writing shows attention to detail, credibility, courtesy and a dedication to clear communication. However, like I said before, the points in the article are applicable to marketing. I’m not talking about using an advanced level of writing here — I’m talking about the importance of investing a little more time in attention to detail and meticulousness. As a matter of fact, businesses don’t need to make use of the most complicated vernacular conceivable or a literati vocabulary to get their message across. To do so would be approaching the other extreme. All I’m trying to say is that businesses must have, as one of their focal points, proper writing, spelling and grammar.

“The importance of proper writing in business and marketing is a fact.”

If a business or company makes use of poor communication or sends me messages with spelling mistakes in them, I’m hesitant to buy from them. If I see marketing messages or emails from companies claiming to have a product or service that will improve my life but the company hasn’t put in the effort to convey this message in proper writing, I can’t help be skeptical about their ability to deliver.

To me, any company worth its professional salt ought to have no problem paying a native speaker of a given language a small fee every month to proofread their documents, social media posts and communications in general, or at least provide the proofreader some form of compensation. It could even be students. I’m sure countless students would even do this for free if it meant a valuable addition to their CV. Granted, some documents are strictly confidential but if that’s the case, I’m fairly certain whoever is writing or distributing those documents would be proficient in the language in question in the first place. Either way, confidential, internal, company documents are not the area I’m addressing in this article.

“There is no excuse not to employ proper language.”

I fully understand that typos or the occasional error are a blight that everyone has to deal with. Even the most cutting-edge proofreading software isn’t completely accurate, nor is the most accomplished author or blogger able to write perfectly. However, there’s an enormous difference between 1 or 2 typos and 20. As I said before, marketing and communication do not necessitate the use of complicated language, but there is no excuse not to employ at least correct language. On a personal level, I would even go so far as to say that writing ‘you’ as ‘u’ and other such modern linguistic traits are unprofessional, but that’s just me. I realize that I’m in a relative minority with this opinion so I won’t touch on it further. What I do think should be emphasized, however, is knowing the difference between ‘their’, ‘there’ and ‘they’re’.

Conclusions

Below are some conclusions to the points I’ve made.

1: Proper Writing is Important, at a Fundamental Level

Writing professionally, in any language, isn’t easy, especially if the language in question isn’t a mother tongue. However, people and consumers want to build relationships and connections with brands and when a company delivers poor-quality messages, that connection is weakened or removed altogether. Indeed, pictures and video are more important than text (especially video), but that doesn’t mean that proper writing should be relegated in terms of importance. Writing is one of the first ways humans stored and shared knowledge (next to perhaps songs and stories). Indeed, writing was the first form of knowledge documentation and sharing with any sort of continuous permanence. It is as much a part and necessity of life as talking, singing and laughing. And it is a craft which directly impacts marketing. People buy from companies and businesses they trust. If your business doesn’t craft quality messages, it is only natural that people will question if your company can craft quality products and services.

2: There are Simple, Quick Solutions to Improving Writing

Employ a native speaker to proofread your work, be it students or someone else looking to earn a little money or add something to their CV. You can also use services like Grammarly, which help proofread your online posts. Even Google Translate is getting remarkably good at generating grammatically correct translations (although I don’t yet trust it completely). There are so many ways you can spend very little time, money or other resources to improve the written quality of your communications. The ones I’ve listed are just a few of the possibilities, but either way, one of the best investments you can make for your company is ensuring that your company communicates clearly.

3: Acknowledge the Importance of Proper Writing in Business

All of what I’ve said is irrelevant if the importance of the points I’m trying to make aren’t taken into consideration. There’s plenty to be found online in support of what I’ve written. Check it out if you want to see what I’m talking about. What I’m trying to say is that these aren’t just my opinions. There is empiric evidence in support of the points I’ve made.

4: Tip: Have the Proofreader of your Work Point out Mistakes so you can Improve

I haven’t really mentioned this in the body of this blog but I’m going to make a point of it anyway. There is absolutely nothing wrong with acknowledging that you’re still learning. Getting feedback from someone you know is better than you are at a given task is a completely logical thing to do. For example, I asked my dad to help me with a few words and sentences in this blog simply because he’s better at English than I am. Always aim to improve, and you’ll do wonders for your business.

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