When I read medical web copy and blogs, I often find they’re loaded with medical jargon. While this kind of language demonstrates knowledge and authority, it makes reading difficult for the average person.
Medical information given to patients needs to be explained in simple language that’s easy to understand. After all, we want them to read the material. If it’s too complex, they’ll stop reading and close the page.
So, if medical practitioners want to keep their audience informed, they need to speak their audience’s language. They can do this by using simple words, shorter sentences, and smaller paragraphs. They also need to appeal to their audience’s emotions, because emotional appeals capture attention and inspire action.
If medical providers use these methods in their marketing collateral and copy, the audience is more likely to come to them for help, trust in their practice, and recommend it to friends and family. They encourage more business, build trust, and strengthen authority. And more importantly, providers give to their community by keeping them in better health.
Simple Language Is Easier to Read and Understand
First, let’s address the need for simplicity in marketing collateral, copy, and content marketing. It starts with literacy and how people read. Low literacy doesn’t mean illiterate or uneducated. It simply means that people have a harder time reading.
Jacob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group discusses research about literacy and the consumer audience. According to Nielsen, people who have lower levels of literacy struggle with larger words, longer sentences, and large blocks of text.
The average person prefers text at an 8th-grade reading level, and low-literacy users prefer text at a 6th-grade reading level. They read each word rather than scan for meaning. If a word is large with more syllables, they have a harder time reading and understanding it.
If they have a hard time reading copy, they’re likely to skip over large portions and miss important information. And they’re likely to click the nearest link that captures their attention. Or they’ll simply stop reading and close the page. You might be shocked to find that about 43% of the US population and 40% of web users have low literacy levels.
Medical copy that’s intended for consumers — typically web copy, blogs, and newsletters — seeks to inform their audience and encourage action. But in many cases, what they actually do is turn readers away because the text is full of medical jargon and complex words. So, to be effective, language and information need to be simplified and easy to read.
And simple language appeals to everyone, including educated, literate people. According to Hoa Loranger who writes for the Nielsen Norman Group, everyone appreciates plain language.
Loranger points out that “the more familiar a word, the higher its activation in memory, and the shorter the memory-retrieval time.” So, simple copy is easier to read and requires less mental effort. This allows the audience to efficiently scan text and pick up on key points.
In addition, complex language conveys the wrong personality. As Loranger states, “Not only is complex language hard to understand, but it also lends the copy a pretentious, cringeworthy tone of voice, that can sound patronizing and can alienate your audience.”
So, medical providers need to use copy that encourages their patients to read and stay informed. When medical providers give helpful information to their patients — an essential element of content marketing — everyone benefits. Doctors and their offices receive more business, and patients stay in better health.
As a result, medical providers demonstrate their authority and build trust. They improve client relations, which encourages higher reviews and better word of mouth. And they motivate past, present, and future patients to seek medical help.
Let’s take this a step further and talk about how sentence and paragraph structure have the same effects.
Shorter Sentences and Paragraphs Promote Reading and Comprehension
I have to admit, academia encouraged me to use long, complex sentences. And because I understand them, I think they flow better. But what I think isn’t necessarily what the average person thinks.
Loranger discusses sentence length and the audience experience: “Rambling sentences, often found in academic papers, tend to have an overabundance of commas, semicolons, and clauses. When readers try to wade through long sentences, they get stuck between clauses and become frustrated.”
Therefore, shorter, more concise sentences are better for collateral and copy. This means breaking longer sentences apart and starting new sentences with a conjunction (and, but, so). It also means using sentences that require fewer commas and avoiding semicolons.
But if only effective writing were so easy. Being clear and concise requires cognitive effort and attention to detail. It also requires a large lexicon of words to draw from.
Ironically, education can get in the way. Doctors, nurses, and medical practitioners live in their world of medical jargon, and it’s hard to detach themselves from that world when writing a blog or newsletter for their patients. These people are prone to writing copy that’s too complex.
Sara Vincent from Inside GOV.UK relies on research in comprehension and cognition when she states that copy is more effective if sentences are below 25 words. In fact, sentences should average 14 words. When a sentence is 14 words, “readers understand more than 90% of what they’re reading.” Sentences of 21 words are fairly difficult, and at 29 words or longer, they’re very difficult. At around 40 words, the audience understands less than 10% of the sentence.
Paragraphs need to follow the same principle. Shorter paragraphs are less intimidating, and they’re easier to read and understand. When the Poynter Institute studied eye-tracking data of online readers, they find that shorter paragraphs encourage reading, while longer paragraphs discourage reading.
All of this is based on the principle of knowing our audience. If we want to write persuasive and influential copy that moves our audience to action, we need to understand what they need. And they need basic, simple language.
Know Your Audience, Stir Their Emotions, and Speak Their Language
Many practices write copy that lays out their qualifications and services, which is an essential element of website copy. But they often include complex medical jargon, and they often exclude emotional appeals. They don’t empathize with their audience through copy and are missing out on an essential element of persuasion.
A fundamental principle of persuasive writing for the general public is that authors need to appeal to their audience’s emotions to demonstrate understanding. By doing this, we empathize and show that we care. So, emotional appeals are critical for identifying with the audience and speaking to their core.
And emotional appeals are the secret to encouraging action. We like to think that we base our experiences, perceptions, and emotions on logic. But in many cases, it’s often the other way around. We base our experiences, perceptions, and logic on emotions.
Emotions often drive our behaviors and thought processes. In fact, people tend to form immediate judgments based on intuitions, which are emotional impulses. According to Jonathan Haidt, social psychologist and author of “The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail,” people are not like judges trying to seek objective truth. Instead, they’re more like lawyers trying to make a case for a pre-established point of view. And emotions are the source of this point of view.
While it’s true that cognition affects emotion, evolution made it more efficient to rely on emotional impulses, which we use to assess situations and form judgments. After all, we couldn’t worry about weighing the positives and negatives of running from a saber-toothed tiger in the heat of the moment. We needed that immediate fear and shot of adrenaline to survive our encounter.
So, emotions play a large role in the way we think, and they often control the decisions we make. When we speak to our audience’s emotions, we speak to their control center.
And while logic is an important part of the persuasive process, emotions truly motivate action. This is why emotional appeals are so important for influence and persuasion — and for marketing communications, copywriting, and content marketing.
While there’s much more to say about emotional reasoning, it’s too vast for this post, so I’ll save the details for another conversation.
In Conclusion
Simple language, basic sentence structure, smaller paragraphs, and emotional appeals are critical elements for web copy, blogs, and newsletters. The goal is to encourage our audience to read, keep them informed, and capture their attention.
In the future, I’ll discuss other elements of persuasion: appeals to beliefs, attitudes, and values. And I’ll have a more thorough discussion about emotional reasoning. In the meantime, I hope you leave comments and have a discussion. Haidt’s argument is certainly provocative and worth talking about. Many of us have had personal experiences, good and bad, with the contrast between emotional and rational thinking.
In closing, watch the following video about the “Trolley Problem.” It raises incredibly interesting questions about emotion’s role in decision-making. What does the video tell you about emotion’s influence on judgment and action? And how might that apply to copywriting and content marketing?