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How good is your attention to detail?

March, 2024

Erica Jones, Account Director at Kent-based PR, marketing and public affairs agency Maxim, is here to tell you about the importance of attention to detail.

Whether you realise it or not, little details can have a big impact on the way a potential customer responds to you. Which means it’s important you pay attention to detail in all things, not just your particular area of expertise.

For marketing specifically, that’s about giving your advert a re-read to check spelling, punctuation and grammar, and to ensure the content is in no way misleading or inaccurate (which really are two different things). For example, are you offering service’s or services? Is your deal a big discount or are you throwing in a gift or service? Have you used the correct name for any local people or places you may reference?

These checks are as important in the advert as they are in any additional marketing: be that a letter, leaflet, or face-to-face conversation, it’s vital you get it right first time.

Why? Because it helps potential customers to trust you and believe in the quality of your product or service.

We all know appropriate use of apostrophes isn’t necessary for being a good bricklayer, but when punctuation is incorrect it can jar the reader, or simply be the random difference that means one brickie is chosen over another. After all, who wants to take the chance that this one tiny curved line on paper is representative of the builder’s slapdash approach to cement?

The incorrect advertising of a discount hopefully doesn’t need too much explanation: think how annoyed you are when your supermarket shopping adds up to more than you’d anticipated. Sure, you probably still return to the supermarket because it’s convenient, but when it comes to more expensive goods and services if you’ve been misled on the price, or it’s increased in any way (think car insurance as an everyday example), who doesn’t shop around?

Then we have the importance of attention to detail for local knowledge. If you’re running an event in a park, make sure you use the correct name. For example, here in Tunbridge Wells we have a Calverley Grounds and a Calverley Park. One is a public park, the other is an exclusive residential area. Invite people to the wrong open space and they might wonder if you've got any other details wrong.

It’s a bit like the legend of Van Halen requesting all the brown M&Ms be removed from the bowl in their dressing room. The story has become almost mythical and is often attached to any number of pop stars, usually as a representation of a spoilt diva attitude, but the origins for the request are really very sensible. If Van Halen’s team arrived to find the sweets correctly sorted, they could trust the venue had good attention to detail and had read the whole rider list. If brown M&Ms were found in the bowl, the team knew the venue hadn’t paid attention: the team knew they’d have to take even more care over their own pre-event checks because they couldn’t trust the venue to have done so. And I’m guessing Van Halen were less keen to return to those places, which would be quite a big loss of revenue in the long run.

If your potential client sees a badly written advert – a stray apostrophe as irritating as that brown M&M – what else will they question that could put them off purchasing your services?

And how do you get around that risk? You get someone who knows about these things to take a look.

This article originally appeared in Kent Director.

Erica Jones - Account Director

Erica Jones

Maxim / Account Director

posted in: advice, marketing, public relations, reputation management,

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