Balancing Practicality with Showmanship

(5 Minute Read) How Embracing Both Communication Styles Can Elevate Your Company's Success

👋🏼 I’m Alek, a repeat founder with a successful exit. I share my experience navigating career and company-building challenges in 5-minute reads every week. My posts typically focus on building resilience and applying a practical, data-driven mindset to your ambitions.

Balancing Practicality with Showmanship

My wife and I saw John Legend perform at Wolftrap National Park a few weeks ago. He recounted stories and sang the songs that got him to where he is today. He wore flashy clothes, spoke and performed theatrically, and carried himself with a level of showmanship that caught me off-guard.

How does this relate to my experiences as a founder? Well—I was reminded that my more practical communication style has a complement: showmanship.

Today, I’ll review both the practical and “showy” approaches to communicating about your company. I’ll share examples of how I’m learning to balance the two styles and the impact it has had on my company.

The Case for Practicality

I typically live on the practical end of the communication spectrum—I root my communication in realism, transparency, and straightforward value propositions.

Practicality appeals to the rational side of your audience, emphasizing the tangible benefits of your product or service. Practicality in marketing a company is about:

1. Building Trust: By being transparent and focusing on your product’s real-world benefits, you build credibility with your audience.

2. Appealing to the Pragmatic Buyer: Not every customer is swayed by flashy marketing. Many are looking for solutions to specific problems, and a practical communication approach focuses on explaining why your product is the best tool for the job.

3. Sustainable Growth: Practicality tends to attract customers who are more loyal and less likely to be swayed by the next big thing. Building a stable, committed customer base can lead to more sustainable growth.

Practicality works particularly well in industries that focus on trust and reliability—such as healthcare, finance, or B2B services. For example, a company offering an AI meeting notetaker solution might find that a practical, trust-building approach resonates more with potential clients than a flashy campaign that lacks substance.

The Case for Showmanship

I’ve never been one for showmanship. I’ve thought, “If my company solves a high-value problem, then that’s all I need to say.” But I’ve learned that putting on a show is often required, especially in the early stages of building your company.

Showmanship in marketing your company is about creating an experience, a narrative, or an image that captures the imagination of your audience. Where practicality appeals to the rational, showmanship appeals to the emotional by:

1. Creating Buzz: A well-crafted narrative or a visually stunning campaign can generate excitement and anticipation even before your product hits the market.

2. Building Emotional Connections: People don’t just buy products; they buy into ideas and emotions. Showmanship helps create a story that resonates at this more profound level.

Showmanship works well when selling B2C products or services. For example, a company offering AI-powered B2C content curation services might find that creating an emotional response through their marketing has a higher impact than focusing solely on time savings.

Finding the Balance

You shouldn’t need to choose between showmanship and practicality. Both communication styles influence every buying decision. At its core, a buying decision is influenced by three mindsets:

1. Pragmatic - What’s the ROI of the purchase I’m making?

   1. Example message appealing to this mindset: “Solidly’s AI notetaker saves you over an hour a day on notetaking.”

2. Emotional - How does/will this purchase make me feel?

   1. Example message appealing to this mindset: “SolidlyAI gives you the peace of mind to fully engage in every conversation, knowing nothing important will slip through the cracks.”

3. Social/Identity - Does this purchase align with how I see myself?

   1. Example message appealing to this mindset: “SolidlyAI empowers you to be an organized and confident client relationship leader.”

Practical communication appeals to the buyer’s pragmatic mindset, and showmanship appeals to the emotional and social mindsets. Every prospective buyer is different and requires different balances of the three. So, for maximum efficacy, marketing communication must appeal to all three mindsets, balancing showmanship and practicality. Here’s an example message from SolidlyAI that does that:

Solidly’s AI notetaker empowers you to be an organized, attentive, and confident client relationship leader. Our detail-oriented AI notetaker provides peace of mind, allowing you to focus on building meaningful client relationships. All while saving your team over an hour a day on notetaking and communication.

This final message draws the reader in with showmanship, painting a picture of who they’ll become and the emotions the product will inspire. It concludes with a practical message, highlighting that SolidlyAI will capture every detail and save time.

What’s the Impact?

In the early days, when SolidlyAI’s messaging was solely practical, the engagement time on our website was 22 seconds per session. Over time, as we’ve added more showmanship to our communication style, engagement has increased by nearly 4x to 82 seconds per session. The impact of these changes has taught me to marry showmanship with practicality in the company’s ongoing marketing communication.

Lessons Learned and Moving Forward

At his recent concert, John Legend reminded me of the impact showmanship has on an audience. Showmanship ignites emotions and captivates an audience in ways practical communication can’t. Founders need to use both styles to build a company.

As founders, we need to create a compelling story that appeals to every aspect of the buyer's decision-making process by weaving practical value propositions together with engaging, emotionally resonant narratives. By making these changes to the SolidlyAI website, I’ve seen a nearly 4x increase in engagement.

I had previously believed showmanship and practicality to be opposing forces—swearing off showmanship in favor of practicality. Moving forward, I’m committing to a more balanced approach between these two styles. Showmanship and practicality are complementary tools that, when used together, can elevate our communication and, ultimately, our success.

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By sharing my experiences, I hope to provide insight and advice to entrepreneurs facing similar challenges. Please leave a comment or email me with any questions.

Photo by Melanie Deziel on Unsplash