Last week was crazy with all the Black Friday promotions going on.
What probably stood out the most was the tweet from McDonald’s.
If you didn’t get a chance to see it, this is what the famous tweet said:
So yeah, they forgot to check if the scheduled post was good to go. Even the big guys fail like amateurs sometimes.
Naturally, the whole internet went crazy about it and that tweet definitely made bigger impact than anything they had in plan.
You could say things worked out for them.
But what made me laugh even more was all the marketing guys saying how McDonald’s Twitter team did this on purpose and expected it to go viral.
Everyone was showing off how they “know” exactly what McDonald’s did there and how it was brilliant.
Oh, how smart marketers they are!
I think it was a pure flop. An honest human mistake.
And I’ll tell you why, it’s going to make sense.
Who is the target market for McDonald’s?
My money is on family with kids, not marketers.
Now just think, does an average person who doesn’t have a clue about marketing even know what the word “copy” stands for in that tweet?
Most likely not…
If they wanted to do this on purpose, they would probably use words that most people would understand, not just marketers.
I may be wrong too, truth is, we’ll never know the truth.
But it reminded me on how knowing too much can be a curse.
Marketing guys understand what the word “copy” is.
But they didn’t think how something that seems natural to them, because they are hearing things like these every day, is completely unfamiliar to someone else.
So they assumed everyone else knows as much as they do.
And this is why they thought McDonald’s Twitter team knew what they were doing and it seemed brilliant.
The same curse can afflict you as well.
You are in your business almost every day.
You understand your products or services in and out.
And because all that info seems pretty basic to YOU, it may not be to your audience.
I’ll give you a more straightforward example.
Turning on computer and opening your browser is something you probably do every day.
And you would assume that everyone is able to do this without any problems.
But, if I were to give the same task to my grandma, she probably wouldn’t even know how to turn the computer on.
Bottom line is, don’t assume your audience knows everything you know about your product or service.
Things that seem common knowledge to you may be rocket science to your audience.
And if there is no clarity in your message, there won’t be connection with the reader and there won’t be any conversions.
This is what I make sure to focus on when creating emails for my client’s sales funnels.
Clarity!
That’s it for this week!
Enjoy the weekend,
Zoran
P.S. Looking for kick-ass emails that will run most of your business on autopilot? Let’s talk.