Is the Curse Of Knowledge Damaging Your Marketing Copy?
An important factor that may be inhibiting your business from getting great returns from your marketing efforts, and thus growing your business, is the Curse of Knowledge in your marketing material copy.
According to the book Made To Stick:
"Once we know something, we find it hard to imagine what it was like not to know it.
Our knowledge has "cursed" us.
And it becomes difficult for us to share our knowledge with others, because we can't readily re-create our potential customers' state of mind."
Many business owners make assumptions about what their potential customers should or shouldn't know, and that is reflected in the copy of their marketing material: websites, brochures, business cards, pamphlets, flyers...
Recommendation
When describing your product or service, focus on their "benefits", and keep the copywriting as simple as possible.
Remove the fluff.
People are now bombarded with ads thousands of times a day and their minds have become adept to filtering out most of it.
Example:
Many hotels in Belize still have tons of rhetorical flourishes describing their rooms.
I hate to say it folks, but most people don't want to read much more than one paragraph of words.
Keep it simple. Focus on the "benefits".
Hotel Room Description: "Our ocean front rooms will put you 2 minutes to the beach. 5 minutes to great restaurants and nightlife. 3 minutes to shopping and tour shops...and 5 seconds to a hammock on your own private balcony overlooking the Caribbean Sea."
In the descriptive copy, nobody wants to hear that your hotel has a toilet, a/c, cable t.v., hot and cold shower, fridge blah blah blah...most modern hotels should have these amenities and more (if not, you may want to upgrade).
Let the pictures on your marketing material do the descriptive-speaking such as the rooms decor...let the copywriting sell the "benefits".
This recommendation can be applied to just about any business type.
If you need help with copywriting for your marketing material, please contact us today.