Your Audience Is Six Years Old

Painting by Debra Hurd

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

― Albert Einstein

It’s often said in the marketing and copywriting world that if we don’t write like we are speaking with a fifth grader our audience will tune out… get EGO – that’s Eyes Glaze Over.

Pretending we’re speaking to a fifth grader stops us getting too wordy and technical. Most of us will default to the way we were taught to write in school – which doesn’t work in marketing. And generally doesn’t work in copywriting either – unless it’s for a highly specialised or technical field.

When we’re writing a marketing message or copywriting the idea it to keep a relatable ‘voice’. Just like selling in real life – we’re collecting yes’s and not no’s. Our audience needs to periodically be saying ‘yes’ in their mind to what we are saying.

If they’re not, we’re losing them.

I think we need to ask ourselves…

• Would a fifth grader understand our marketing messages?
• If we explained what we do for our customers/clients to a 6 six year old, would they get it?
• Do we understand our business and our customer/client well enough?

I think Albert was on to something…

“If you can’t explain it to a six year old, you don’t understand it yourself.”

This definitely challenges me.

Any thoughts?

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