The more you know about your business, the harder it may be to explain it clearly.
That sounds backward. Expertise should make communication easier. Yet some of the most confusing websites, advertisements, and sales presentations are created by highly knowledgeable people.
The problem is not a lack of intelligence. It may be the result of having too much knowledge.
Psychologists call this the curse of knowledge: once we understand something, it becomes difficult to imagine what it was like not to understand it.
Expertise changes how you see your business
As a scientist and business owner, I know how easy it is to fall into this trap.
When you have spent years developing a product or service, you understand its terminology, features, history, and competitive advantages. You recognize connections that are invisible to a first-time customer.
Your customers do not have that background.
They arrive at your website with incomplete information and a few immediate questions:
- Is this meant for someone like me?
- Does it solve a problem I recognize?
- What will it help me accomplish?
- Why should I trust it?
- What should I do next?
Meanwhile, the business owner may be explaining proprietary processes, advanced features, technical distinctions, company history, and industry terminology.
All of that information might be accurate. It may even be impressive. But it is not necessarily what the customer needs first.
The curse of knowledge
The term “curse of knowledge” was introduced in research examining how people with more information predicted the judgments of people with less information. The researchers found that informed participants had difficulty ignoring what they already knew when estimating what someone else would understand or believe (Camerer, Loewenstein, & Weber, 1989).
Later research found a similar problem with expertise. Experts sometimes underestimated how difficult a task would be for a beginner—even when they were specifically encouraged to consider the beginner’s perspective (Hinds, 1999).
This does not mean experts are poor communicators. It means expertise creates a predictable blind spot.
Concepts that once required conscious effort have become automatic. Experts mentally combine many pieces of information into a single familiar idea. Beginners still have to process each piece separately.
The expert sees one simple concept.
The beginner sees seven unfamiliar concepts arriving simultaneously.
What confusing marketing sounds like
Imagine a software company describing its service this way:
Our integrated, AI-enabled ecosystem leverages real-time analytics and cross-functional workflow automation to optimize operational efficiency.
The statement sounds sophisticated. But what does the customer actually receive?
A clearer version might be:
See where projects are getting stuck, automate repetitive tasks, and help your team finish work faster.
The second version is not less intelligent. It simply translates the company’s expertise into an outcome the customer can understand.
The same problem appears in almost every industry.
A consultant describes a “proprietary multidimensional assessment methodology” instead of explaining that they identify why sales are being lost.
A financial professional discusses “tax-advantaged asset-allocation strategies” before explaining how the strategy might protect the client’s retirement income.
A neuromarketing specialist describes “predictive attention modeling and behavioral diagnostics” instead of saying:
We show you what customers notice, what they miss, and what you should change first.
Technical language has a place. The mistake is introducing it before the customer understands why it matters.
Confusion quietly increases resistance
Customers rarely announce that your marketing is too complicated. They do not usually send an email saying, “Your message required too much mental effort.”
They simply leave.
When a message is difficult to process, the customer has to work harder to determine what is being offered, whether it is relevant, and whether it can be trusted.
Research on jargon illustrates this problem. In an experiment involving 650 participants, jargon made scientific information more difficult to process and increased resistance—even when definitions of the technical terms were provided (Shulman, Dixon, Bullock, & Colón Amill, 2020).
This is important because many businesses try to solve jargon by defining it.
But explaining an unnecessary technical term does not remove the unnecessary term. It simply gives the customer two things to process instead of one.
Complicated language may not make the writer appear more intelligent either. In a series of experiments, needlessly complex vocabulary caused writers to be evaluated less favorably, including being judged as less intelligent (Oppenheimer, 2006).
Complexity can create an impression of expertise—but it can also create distance, uncertainty, and suspicion.
Clear marketing is not “dumbing it down”
Business owners sometimes resist simpler language because they fear it will make their service appear basic.
Clarity does not require removing substance. It requires presenting substance in the order the customer can understand it.
Think of your marketing as a staircase.
The first step should communicate the problem and desired outcome. Once the customer understands those, you can introduce the mechanism, evidence, features, and technical details.
If you begin on the fifth step, the customer has nothing to stand on.
Processing-fluency research suggests that the ease or difficulty of processing information can influence how people evaluate what they encounter (Alter & Oppenheimer, 2009). This does not mean that everything simple will automatically be believed. It means unnecessary difficulty can become an additional obstacle.
Your customer should evaluate the value of your offer—not struggle to decode your explanation of it.
A practical way to make expert marketing clearer
Before publishing a webpage, advertisement, email, or presentation, examine it through the following sequence.
- Begin with the customer’s situation
Do not begin with your process. Begin with the problem the customer recognizes.
Instead of:
We provide an integrated customer-experience optimization system.
Try:
Customers are visiting your website—but too many leave without taking action.
The second version enters the conversation already happening in the customer’s mind.
- Describe the outcome before the mechanism
Customers usually need to understand the destination before they become interested in the vehicle.
First explain what changes. Then explain how you create that change.
- Translate every feature into a consequence
Ask “So what?” after every feature.
- Real-time reporting—so what?
- Automated follow-up—so what?
- Predictive attention analysis—so what?
Continue until you reach an outcome the customer values:
- See problems sooner.
- Lose fewer potential customers.
- Discover which parts of the message people are overlooking.
- Remove information that belongs later
Not every true fact belongs in the opening message.
Technical specifications, methodology, credentials, detailed comparisons, and implementation information may be extremely valuable. They simply may not belong in the first paragraph.
Clarity is partly about deciding what the customer does not need yet.
- Test the message with a real beginner
Do not ask another expert whether the message is clear. Experts may share the same blind spots.
Show it to someone who resembles your intended customer and ask:
- What do you think this business offers?
- Who is it for?
- What problem does it solve?
- What would you expect to happen next?
- Which words were unclear?
Do not explain the message during the test. The need to explain it is part of the result.
The goal is not simpler marketing. It is faster understanding.
Your customers should not need your experience to understand your offer.
They should not have to learn your terminology, reconstruct your logic, or search through your website to determine why your service matters.
Your expertise should make the customer’s decision easier—not make your explanation more complicated.
The smartest marketing is rarely the message that demonstrates everything the business knows.
It is the message that helps the customer understand what matters most.
References
- Camerer, C., Loewenstein, G., & Weber, M. (1989). The curse of knowledge in economic settings: An experimental analysis. Journal of Political Economy, 97(5), 1232–1254.
- Hinds, P. J. (1999). The curse of expertise: The effects of expertise and debiasing methods on predictions of novice performance. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 5(2), 205–221.
- Nickerson, R. S. (1999). How we know—and sometimes misjudge—what others know: Imputing one’s own knowledge to others. Psychological Bulletin, 125(6), 737–759.
- Shulman, H. C., Dixon, G. N., Bullock, O. M., & Colón Amill, D. (2020). The effects of jargon on processing fluency, self-perceptions, and scientific engagement. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 39(5–6), 579–597.
- Oppenheimer, D. M. (2006). Consequences of erudite vernacular utilized irrespective of necessity: Problems with using long words needlessly. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 20(2), 139–156.
- Alter, A. L., & Oppenheimer, D. M. (2009). Uniting the tribes of fluency to form a metacognitive nation. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 13(3), 219–235.