Here are some more words that we maybe shouldn’t be using in promoting businesses anymore.

Spend

Your message should be so perfectly tailored that I have a pretty darn good idea of what you’re selling and why I should buy it.

Investment

Unless, of course, this word is in the title of your company, using this as a synonym for “prices” does not conceal its true meaning. Sorry. Oh, and it makes it sound like what you’re selling/offering is too expensive for me to afford anyway.

Kick-butt

The only time this copy may be appropriate is if you’re writing copy for action figures for kids; you’ll likely annoy their parents when the kids start repeating this phrase, too. Stop it.

Customer service

“Excellent customer service” just doesn’t mean anything. Yeah, maybe you DO have excellent customer service but if so just show me exactly what you do to demonstrate your customer service.  So go ahead and gloat about it, but only if you do something really cool, but maybe don’t call it customer service, maybe talk about your awesome return policy or amazing checkout process without calling it customer service.

Integrity

Prove it. Give me case studies, blog pots, scans of hand-written letters from other customers claiming you have this. I don’t believe you.

Caring

Especially in regards to the overly used and increasingly meaningless “We care!” slogan, cut it out. If you’re in business and you have customers, of course you care. Get more creative.

Synergy

Cliche. Overused. Annoying. Enough said. (Oops, I use this one a fair bit!)

Successful

Again, how are you successful? To me, success can mean waking up in the morning within an hour of my alarm going off. Show me your success or I will start to assume; everyone knows what happens when you assume — you make an a** out of you and me.