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Can you be too creative to be successful?
When it comes to entrepreneurial success, strategy and clarity will trump creativity every time.
When I was teaching Marketing 101 to sleepy undergraduates, we used to talk about the way customers perceive differences between products and how they tolerated change.
It’s easy to see with a car manufacturer. You want to change the design of the model you’ve been selling for the past 20 years.
Here are 3 ways you can kill the interest with a creativity overdose.
(1) Prospects can’t categorize your offer.
The truth is, people like familiar categories. When they hear about your service, they want to put you into a familiar category. Are you a life coach? Copywriter? Business coach? Consultant?
You may have received advice to avoid categories. For instance, describe your service as “stress relief.”
But there’s a big difference in stress relief with aromatherapy, massage, meditation, herbal teas, or psychotherapy. Your audience may tune out as soon as they hear the term “aromatherapy” or “counseling.”
It’s unlikely they’ll be convinced by any discussion of the powerful stress-relieving properties of the modality in question
