It took me a little while to fully grasp this
concept and learn how to use it appropriately so stay with me
on this. You'll be happy you did.
Most people believe that if they spend as much
energy telling their business prospects about all the features
of their product or service that they put into its development,
that they're practicing good marketing. Actually, that's a mistake.
Ok, I think mistake is a hard word - so let me say - it's not
the optimal way of doing things for getting the results you
want.
Although the business owner or developer may have
spent hundreds of hours adding rich features that people will
like and will happily use, the features themselves shouldn't be the focus of their marketing efforts.
The human mind is a mysterious thing.
In all aspects of our lives we think we use logic and
knowledge to make our decisions. In some cases we actually do.
But when it comes to buying anything, we actually tend to make
decisions based on feelings and emotions instead of logic. Did
you get that? Feelings and emotions, not logic. And the MBA
people scoffed when I used to talk about this stuff - they called
it fluff. Well, now I'm proof that understanding the human condition
is more important in selling than finance or accounting. 
Sorry for that rant! Here are some examples of
features and their related benefits to help illustrate this
concept:
Benefits answer people's main question
- "What's in it for me?"
When you answer that question with benefits, people
become more involved and perceive your product or service as
having a higher value. You've touched them and sparked their
buying interest in some way by focusing on benefits.
Benefits reach and activate the buyer's imagination.
When you ignite their minds and get them thinking about how
good they'll feel, or how much money they'll save, or how smart
they're going to appear.....you've got them hook, line and sinker.
The best way to use this concept to your
advantage is to do the following exercise:
Take a sheet of paper or a spreadsheet and split
it into two columns.
On the left side of the table, list all the features
of your product or service. Think it through, analyze it and
write everything down.
After you've done that, read each feature one
by one and let your imagination run free. Take a feature and
think how can I use this feature and what will it do for me?
(See, the what's in it for me? concept). You can usually come
up with several benefits for each feature by looking at it and
thinking about it in different ways.
Take a real life example from my consulting practise
to help you. I was writing a sales letter for a company that
gave seminars on leadership. They gave me a bunch of material
to look over and it was a lot of really brainy material that
focused on the types of things people learned in their seminar.
Now first thing's first, I believe in them and their services
so it made it that much easier.
|
Benefit |
| Learn the Comfort
Zone Theory |
Learn what's been stopping you
from achieving success and how breaking free from destructive
patterns will improve your quality of life |
| Learn Leadership Language |
Relax and have confidence knowing
how to Inspire and Motivate others and get them to respond
positively to everything you say |
| Learn Group Dynamics |
Learn how to foster the best
team that produces the results you need in less time and
without any ego-battles |
Do you see how I flipped things around? I got
the readers to use their imaginations. I created a picture for
them, allowing them to fill in any gaps to make a story. In
addition to outlining the logical elements (features) of the
seminar alone, which are factual and apppeal to their logical
cores, I'm appealing to a deeper side within them.
Now with their imaginations going, their hearts
are getting excited about having your product or using your
service. Eureka! they're thinking, they've found what
they're looking for.
The funny thing is, they may not have even realized how much they wanted it before you kick-started their
imaginations and got them connecting with their ultimate wants
and desires.
Now they know what they have to gain and that
really is the key to marketing effectively on the internet and
anywhere else. Marketing after all is creating desire.
