By Joe Natoli, CEO, Natoli Design Group

Who are we doing this for?

The most critical rule shared by marketing, advertising and design is also the one that is most often ignored by companies:

You are not your target audience.

When you're planning the look and feel of your marketing materials or your web site, you must remember that the main goal is not to attract or satisfy yourself-your real job is to attract and satisfy the audience of these materials. Your main goal is to talk to your customers-visually and verbally-in a language that's theirs, not yours.

Every single aspect of your promotions-your print ads, your sales collateral, your TV spots, your web site-MUST be customer-focused!

If I had a nickel for every time a client insisted on something the board thought was great-and that I knew would be ignored by the intended audience (or worse, would probably offend them)-I'd be a rich man living on a tropical island and I wouldn't bother preaching to you here.

Read this sentence over and over until it makes sense: THIS IS NOT ABOUT YOU.

Your customers don't care what your personal tastes are. They don't care what kind of images you like, what colors are your favorites. They don't care about all of the industry terminology that populates your internal communications. They're looking to you to answer their questions in a visual and verbal language they can understand-quickly, clearly and honestly.

Talk to me like a person

The way to get prospects to listen to what you have to say is simple: speak clearly and directly to your customers. Forget the jargon, forget the industry-speak and tell people what you do and why it matters. And if you can't explain why it matters to them, spend some time and/or money finding out.

Here's a fictitious example of a corporate disclaimer:

Noncompliance issues could arise if Acme-manufactured products are combined with other manufacturer's products. Acme can not test all possible system configurations in which Acme manufactured products could be incorporated. Our products currently test as being compliant. However, customers must test integrated systems to see if other components work with Acme manufactured products. Acme makes no representation or warranty concerning non-Acme manufactured products.

Now this version:

If you're using our equipment with someone else's gear, who the hell knows what's going to happen. We sure don't, so how can we promise you something specific, or even vague for that matter? We can't, so we won't. However, we love our customers and like always we'll do whatever is reasonable to solve whatever problems come up, if there are any.

People know intuitively when something written is sincere and honest-whether it comes from another person's heart, rather than committee-edited corporate-speak. They know whether you're genuinely interested in helping them or whether you're just after their wallets.

There's an inherent arrogance in too much of what passes for corporate marketing communication today. The voice, humor and simple honesty that characterize person-to-person conversation are missing in action. Your promotions should have a human voice-and that voice should stand for something, it should mean something. It should show that you want to meet the people who are your customers, that you want to understand them.

I'm your customer. I'm asking: What do you do? How does your product or service improve my life? My business? Talk to me from my perspective. Will your product or service save me time? Make me richer? Make me more attractive? Drive home your biggest benefits as clearly and directly as possible. When you tell prospects about your product or service, you must also tell them how it's going to affect their lives.

Joe Natoli is the CEO | Design Evangelist for Natoli Design Group. He firmly believes that great design results in happy customers, fatter margins, shorter price wars and major return on investment dollars. Drop him a line at jnatoli@natolidesign.com.

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