Clarity Sells

This is a rule about clarity in marketing, and about where clarity ranks. In Donald Miller’s telling it comes first: whether a customer can understand what a business sells matters more than how good the product is or how the website looks. He was saying it before he put it in a book.

On July 25, 2016, he posted it on Twitter: “If you confuse, you’ll lose. Never have a confusing message again,” with a link. It is in Building a StoryBrand (HarperCollins Leadership, 2017) too: “It’s true: if you confuse, you’ll lose.” Miller came to marketing from writing about faith; his Blue Like Jazz (2003) is subtitled Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality. He now runs StoryBrand, a company that helps businesses clarify their message, and Building a StoryBrand is the book version of what the company teaches.

In the same book Miller gives his rule for how buyers choose: “People don’t buy the best products; they buy the products they can understand the fastest.” A buyer who has to work out what you sell does not do the work; they go with the competitor they understood on the first read, better product or not. His practical version: “The fact is, pretty websites don’t sell things. Words sell things.”