For the last few years, Kathy and I have been going to a few marketing conferences together.

I know, really romantic, right?

For the most recent one, we were looking through the agenda to see which sessions we should go to.

Because it was a conference for marketing people the titles were, well, a bit hypey to say the least.

“Follow the XYZ method to 5x your lead generation”

“How this one simple tweak can double your sales in 24 hours”

That kind of thing.

Drives me mad. You can never tell whether the session is going to be full of insight or just the same stuff you already know but hyped up to make it sound great.

In amongst all that Kathy said “let's go to this one”.

“It's the only one where I can tell from the description what the talk is actually about”.

Think about that for a minute.

The marketing for the session didn't need to make all sorts of wild claims in an attempt to shout louder than all the other sessions.

It just quietly told us what the topic was, what we'd learn, and what we'd get from that.

So we signed up.

I'm not saying everyone will flood into that session. Many, many people at marketing conferences are attracted by the hypey “quintuple your business overnight” type sales pitch.

But a significant number of people in all markets are just looking for clarity.

What exactly will I get from this?

When you're learning marketing it's all too easy to think that you need to do the hypey thing too.

And there are plenty of “marketing experts” who'll tell you that's what you need to do.

The problem is that they've only ever sold marketing to marketing people. They live in a bubble where that kind of hype works.

In the real world, there are huge numbers of people who are turned off by it.

My guess is a lot of your clients are just looking for clarity.

What exactly will they get from what you offer? What will it mean for them?

Your marketing should tell them straight. No need for hype.

Unless you're a marketing guru marketing to marketing people who sell marketing to marketing people of course.

In which case ignore everything I say, unsubscribe right now, and listen to the millions of marketing guru gurus out there :)

But for people who have real clients: keep it simple. Keep it clear.