I was chatting to a co-founder of a business this week.
After 5 successful years, they're struggling with conversion.
Despite getting thousands of website visits each week.
They get very few sign-ups.
Strategically, they're in a super strong position: first to market, the ONLY option in the UK, and it's a hot topic.
So the question is: why aren't people signing up?
Maybe that sounds familiar.
In this week's newsletter, we dive into the curse of knowledge and how to avoid projecting what you care about into your comms, so your message resonates with your audience.
When expertise becomes the problem
There's a phenomenon that occurs within organisations working on important issues that crushes any likelihood of creating change (or converstion). I've seen it in grassroots organisations and global brands. No one's immune.
It goes a bit like this:
When starting out, teams are ultra curious. They talk to people, look at social sentiment, listen to feedback, explore new angles.
But over time, that curiosity is replaced by confidence.
As you go deeper down the rabbit hole, you get obsessed with the details. You're reading reports, having internal conversations, ideating solutions. By the end of it, you know the topic back-to-front. All the history, the context, the possibility.
I'll make this tangible.
Say you're a Transition Town working on an environmental issue in your community. After months of research you conclude the best thing to do is to create a community solar project. Great!
So you start knocking on doors asking your community to support. Maybe you say something like:
"Hi, I'm Sally from Transition Totnes. We're a community group acting on climate change trying to reduce our town's reliance on fossil fuels. We're setting up a community solar project. Are you interested?"
But no one signs.
See, your audience hasn't been on the journey you have. And maybe they don't even care about the climate. Instead, they're trying to put food on the table, heat the house, or get a job. How's a community solar project going to help them with that?
The problem is that Sally has mistaken their organisations goals for their audience's goals.
Sally's fallen victim to a blend of the curse of knowledge and projection bias.
And this is happens all the time.
So what's gone on here?
Projection bias is our tendency to assume other people see the world the same way we do. That they care about the same things, notice the same problems, and prioritise the same outcomes.
And the curse of knowledge? This is the phenomenon where once you understand something, it becomes very hard to imagine what it's like to not know that thing.
The combination of these things is why, I think, so many brand messages go amiss.
It's why laptop ads rave about their 4.2 ghz Intel CPU, and why outdoor brands talk about the 750 fill power in their down jacket. Yawn.
We've all made this mistake.
Hemingway is the antidote
Surprisingly, the antidote is not better messaging, better branding, better strategies or any of that.
It's better listening.
“I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.” – Ernest Hemingway
So embrace your childish curiosity and ask questions:
- What are people worried about?
- What pressures are shaping their decisions?
- What keeps them up at night?
Then you can figure out how you can fit into their world.
That line's important. So I'll say it again: figure out how YOU can fit into THEIR world.
Imagine if Sally had said, "Hi, I'm Sally from the local Transition group. I'm just wondering, are you concerned about rising energy bills?"
What would the response have been then?
Our job as changemakers is not to get people to care about what we care about. It's to show how our work helps them solve a problem they already care about.
And on the theme of listening...
I'd love to understand what your challenges are and what you want to read about. Mind sparing 23 seconds to tell me?
If this has been helpful, please pass it on.