You can find plenty of clichés used (overused?) in B2B marketing content. Do they really communicate better with our audience or are we as copywriters/content creators just being lazy? I know I have been guilty on more than one occasion of using popular clichés in my business marketing communications.
I found a Squidoo lens by Seth Godin where he talks about why we tend to use clichés or buzzwords. According to him, “…the vast majority of buzzwords exist for one reason: to hide.” He goes on to list his top ten and invites his readers to add their own to the list.
Here are the top ten business clichés from Seth’s list:
I couldn’t tell how old this lens was but the original ten has grown to 384 as of the date of this post. I have added two of my own:
You can read the complete list at The Encyclopedia of Business Clichés.
The use of buzzwords or clichés in B2B marketing content is not a new trend. Back in 2006, David Meerman Scott had a done comprehensive analysis over a nine-month period of the large number of meaningless phrases used in corporate marketing and PR materials. He called it “The Gobbledygook Manifesto.”
He has updated the original analysis with new data from November 1, 2006, to July 31, 2007. Here’s a chart from the revised data, which shows the top three gobbledygook business adjectives as 1) next generation, 2) robust and 3) flexible.
Gobbledygook - click for larger view
If you haven’t read the original report, download the revised version from ChangeThis The Gobbledygook Manifesto by David Meerman Scott.
Let me end this post with a humorous video that I found on YouTube. It is by IAS – a B2B marketing agency from England. Goes to show that the use of clichés in B2b marketing content is not restricted to the U.S. only.
The campaign against B2B marketing clichés
Let’s chat to determine if this will be a good fit for both of us. It will be a friendly conversation to get to know each other better, not a high-pressure sales pitch.