Clear, compelling, and concise.

No matter what you’re creating, if it’s marketing related, I will ask you: Is it clear, compelling, and concise?

This has been a mantra of mine for the last 10 years. I discovered the 3C’s while reading a blog by Google about how to design effective display ads.

Back then, display ads were notoriously cluttered with every possible word and image. At the time, I was working for a newspaper group managing digital ad production. The team designed ads, and I ran and reported on the campaigns. Here’s what a common request looked like:

Did you get all that? This is for a banner ad that someone only sees for about 5 seconds (if you’re lucky). What problem are they solving for me? How would I benefit from interacting with this business?

I’m lucky because times have changed. Back then, I trained the sales reps to look at what national brands were doing and always touted “Clear, Compelling, and Concise.”

But it is still relevant today.

What are you working on for your marketing collateral or message? Name it, anything. I will take a wild guess and say you need to ask yourself these questions.

• Is this clearly telling the customer or client what I do to help them solve a problem?

• Is this drawing their attention and giving them a compelling reason to connect with me?

• Is this concise and only provides the necessary information to take the next steps to move forward?

You must make it easy for your customers and clients to understand your goal of presenting this to them. Don't get caught up trying to give everything to everyone. It will just cause unnecessary confusion. And when you confuse, they move on. 

Banner ads are an easy target. But don’t forget about the emails you are writing and the data reports you’re building. The landing pages you are creating or social posts you are sharing. Everything you put out into the wild needs that critical eye and questioning if you’re hitting the mark.

Clear, compelling, and concise.

Always be learning.

📣 Check your image file names

The filename you use when uploading images to your website is essential. But I did not know how important it was. This is straight from a Google podcast, so I take it pretty seriously.

Because of the way sites are scanned for search results, “it’s recommended by Google that images be given meaningful filenames.” But… they also say it matters the most when you first upload. So changing file names now won’t do you much good.

That means every time you upload an image or graphic to your website, the file name and alt text need to be relevant to your business and the page. It will help with your SEO to boost your organic reach.

Recommendations: If you’re writing a blog post, use the blog post’s title as your file name in the graphic. For images on your homepage or product page, include the keywords you focus on.

🎧 What I’m listening to

Deep Questions Podcast #218 Work vs. Meaning: Cycles present themselves to us throughout human history. In this podcast, Cal Newport dives into the evolving relationship with work from the 1950s to today. This is a good listen for anyone working with someone from a different generation or curious about what will happen in this next cycle we’re heading into.

📕 What I’m reading

Linked: Conquer LinkedIn. Get Your Dream Job. Own Your Future. by Omar Garriott, Jeremy Schifeling

If you’re looking for a job (now or ever again), this is an actionable book to get you on the right track to using today's tools to get a job that is important to you. I’ve been digging LinkedIn lately and taking steps from this book to boost my presence.

Thanks for reading this first edition of Evergreen. I'd love to hear from you.

Let’s do this!

Lyndee

P.S. If you’re wondering if you’re hitting the mark with the 3C’s, hit reply and let me know what you’re working on.