Jargon dominates ALL marketing and advertising. Think of jargon as words or phrases that are painfully commonplace and predictable, that lack power to evoke interest through overuse or repetition. In advertising, you see and hear jargon all the time.

Since businesses only have 30 seconds to try to convey what makes them special, they lump everything into jargon such as “largest selection,” “most professional,” “lowest prices,” “highest quality,” “best service,” “fastest,” “most convenient,” “largest in the state,” “more honest,” “we're the experts,” “we specialize,” “works harder,” “gets the job done right the first time,” and “been in business for 400 years.”

Now listen, I'm not saying that you shouldn't be those kinds of things. Those actually make up the foundation you want to use to build your inside reality. However, if my marketing says that I offer high quality and great service, isn't that drearily commonplace and predictable? Doesn't it lack power to evoke interest through overuse or repetition? Don’t businesses state it as though it were original and significant? Does it communicate my inside reality? Can you tell specifically what makes me valuable to the marketplace when I say, “highest quality” or “best service?”

See, you simply can't describe, demonstrate, exhibit, reveal, or display your inside reality using jargon. It's impossible! And unfortunately, the end result is an outside perception that you're no different than anyone else. There's absolutely no distinction, no separation, and no differentiation. None. You just flat-out can't make your inside reality and outside perception match up when you use jargon like this.

In fact, let me give you a way you can easily and quickly evaluate your own marketing to see if you're getting caught up in the jargon trap. This evaluation is what we call, “Well, I would hope so.”  When you make a claim, don't think about it in terms of the words coming out of your mouth. Think about it in terms of the words entering your prospect's ears. This will enable you to realize just how absurd most jargon sounds. Look at the messaging in your marketing, and then ask yourself if the prospect's immediate response might be, “Well, I would hope so.”