How do you simplify technical jargon so that your audience understands it but not so much so as to lose its essence?

It is so easy to fall into launching with technical jargon when you've been living and breathing it as a PMM! Two ways that I have found helpful in simplifying, and even transforming/replacing techncial jargon are (1) launch customer interviews, listen and use the language they use, and (2) crowd source ideas internally and externally with as many different POVs as possible.

Pro tip: Get inspired by looking outside your field to see how others are taking tricky technical language and turning it into customer-facing messaging that resonates!

That is a fine art and takes a lot of practice. That said here are a few helpful ideas

1. Look to industry publications and journalists for inspiration. I read a lot of artile on tech crunch, business insider, wored and other tech publications to understand their approach.

2. Use short, clear sentences and replace technical adjectives/verbs with non technical ones. For example, a sentence like "our technology can defragment frontends from backends" may be replaced by "our technology lets any frontend work with any backend."

3. Focus on the benefit and the why audiences should care, instead of getting lost in feature descriptions.

Sometimes technical jargon is hard to boil down and can actually serve as proof points in your message. If that's the case, you can keep some of the technical jargon but make sure to add language around the benefit so readers can understand why it matters. For example, we speak a lot about intent at Demandbase. We say, "Get up-to-date in-market signals from over 375,000 intent keywords — reliable signals show product and competitive interests." The technical aspects are what differentiate your product and often help readers understand how you might differ from another solution. Therefore, keeping some of the technical aspects will support your benefits and serve as proof points, but it's important to include the benefits in there using copy that's easier to understand so readers understand why those technical aspects matter.

There's no replacement for talking to humans. And the less technical the better. We can all sit in a room with people "in the know" and nod our heads as we look at messaging. But try explaining it in conversation so someone who's never heard of your category, that's a different story. Try explaining to your mom, partner, friend, kid, etc. Then ask them:

-did that make sense?

-how is our product different from others?

-why do you think people are buying this?

The more humans you get in front of, the better your messaging is going to be in the intuitive department.