There's a nasty little habit it's very easy to get into that can really damage your ability to make a connection with your clients.

It was brought home to me at a conference I was at recently. 

The conference had a lot of corporate marketing types there. Not normally folks I hang out with. And what caught my attention was the language they used.

To them it seemed perfectly normal to talk about people having “conversations with brands”. When what they really meant meant was people watching TV ads, reading articles or commenting on Facebook pages.

Nobody has a conversation with a brand. We talk to people.

And in most cases the activities they were describing weren't conversational at all, they were one-way consumption.

But much worse than the fact that their language is misleading is that it disconnects them from their clients.

Normal business owners and managers don't talk about having conversations with brands. But because this internal jargon was so commonplace amongst the corporate marketing types they used it with “normal” people, not realising how it sounded.

And, of course, it's not just corporate marketing types that put off clients because of the internal language they use. We all do it sometimes.

Online marketers are prone to talking about lead generation and funnels: words their clients rarely use.

Leadership experts talk about authenticity and engagement: leaders don't. (Well, they may talk about it, but those aren't the words they use).

Have a look at the phrases you use in your business communications. How many of them are internal jargon or cliquey words your profession uses rather than being something your clients say.

Because the more you use language that your clients don't, the more you feel like an outsider to them.

The more you use the exact same lanugage they do, the more you'll feel like one of them.