The Million Dollar Question: Should Marketing Be Informative or Entertaining?

Do you tell her what's in the box, or make the wrapping pretty and wait for her to find out on her own?

With the huge amount of information available on the Internet these days, marketing professionals have a new hill to climb they’ve never had to deal with before. They need to decide whether they’re going to inform their customers or entertain them to get the best return on their investment.

Doctors often lament the over abundance of information on the internet and the role it’s played in turning all of us into over-informed hypochondriacs. They’d rather patients have a minimum of information at their fingertips and make an active effort to seek out more from specialists in the field than going on the Internet and getting that information from every Tom, Dick and Stacey.

That’s kind of where today’s marketing professionals are. They want to make sure they’re catching their customers’ eyes. They want to be entertaining and fun and become the name their customers remember at the end of the day. But they also want to make sure their customers are getting their information from them instead of some random person on the internet.

So should your marketing materials inform or entertain?

I recommend going for a mix. Make it fun, but make sure they know who you are and what you do. More importantly, let them know what they’re going to get from deciding to choose you. But don’t hammer the point. Keep it simple, and give them the information they need to come to you. They will. Sooner or later, they will.