The marketing words that usually mean nobody has decided anything

I am not anti-jargon because I think every business conversation needs to sound like a chat in the pub. Specialist language exists for a reason. Sometimes one technical word is genuinely more useful than a paragraph of explanation.

What I dislike is language that makes a simple idea sound more impressive while making the decision underneath it harder to see.

Marketing is particularly good at this. We take something fairly straightforward, wrap it in a word that sounds strategic, and everyone in the room nods because nobody wants to be the person who asks what it actually means.

So, in the spirit of making marketing make sense, here are three words I would happily put on gardening leave.

1. Synergy

Synergy is usually what we say when we mean, 'These things should work together.'

Which is true. Your email should probably support your content. Your paid activity should probably learn from your organic activity. Sales should know what marketing is saying. The website should not behave like it has never met the rest of the business.

All sensible.

But the word 'synergy' lets us skip the useful part of the conversation. Exactly which things are supposed to work together? How? What is each one contributing? What would we expect to happen if the connection is working?

If I hear, 'We need more synergy between marketing and sales,' I want to translate it into something a team can actually do.

Maybe it means sales needs to feed objections back into content. Maybe marketing needs access to lost-deal reasons. Maybe both teams need to agree which customers are worth pursuing. Maybe the CRM needs one definition of a qualified lead rather than three.

That is a plan. Synergy is a hope wearing a lanyard.

2. Holistic

Holistic marketing is another phrase that can mean almost anything, which is handy if you are trying to sell almost anything.

Usually the intended meaning is reasonable. Do not treat channels as isolated islands. Consider the full customer journey. Join up the work. Understand that brand, performance, content, sales and customer experience affect each other.

I agree with all of that.

The problem is what often happens next. 'Holistic' quietly becomes permission to do everything at once.

SEO. Paid. Social. Email. Video. PR. Automation. Events. A podcast. Probably a dashboard to prove the holistic nature of the holistic marketing.

Joined-up marketing does not mean maximum marketing. In fact, properly joined-up thinking often leads to doing less because it exposes which pieces matter and which are just activity.

If a business has a conversion problem, a holistic answer is not automatically seven channels. It might be fixing the offer, the proof and the sales follow-up before generating another click.

So when someone says 'holistic', I want to ask, 'What exactly are we joining up, and what are we deliberately leaving alone for now?'

3. Awareness

This one is more controversial because awareness is a real thing. Of course people need to know you exist before they can buy from you.

I would not ban the concept. I would ban the lazy use of the word.

'We need more brand awareness' is one of those sentences that sounds like a strategy but often tells us almost nothing.

Awareness with whom? For what? In which buying situation? How much awareness do we need? What do we want people to remember? What problem should our name become associated with? What happens after they become aware of us?

If 100,000 more people recognise your logo but none of them are likely to buy, recommend or influence a purchase, you have created a lovely number and not necessarily much else.

My own book on the messy middle talks about awareness as part of the customer journey. It matters. But awareness is only useful when it connects to relevance, trust and a next step. Attention is cheap. Confidence is the harder job.

What I would replace them with

I am not proposing a new dictionary of marketing terms. Quite the opposite.

I would replace all three with questions.

• Instead of 'synergy', ask: which parts need to work together, and what information needs to move between them?
• Instead of 'holistic', ask: what is the whole problem, and which part deserves attention first?
• Instead of 'awareness', ask: who needs to remember us, what do we want them to remember, and what should become easier as a result?

The good thing about questions is that they are harder to hide behind.

Marketing does not become more strategic when the language becomes more impressive. Usually the opposite happens.

If a phrase makes the room feel clever but leaves nobody clearer about what happens next, I am suspicious of it.

And if you ever hear me say 'holistic synergy to drive awareness', you have my permission to end the meeting.