You’re probably proud of your products and services. It’s also likely that your marketing includes lists of features, capabilities, and specifications about these products or services. These are important, but you might be missing one vital thing to get prospects to engage and convert…
Leading with the actual benefits and what your offerings actually bring your customers.
Leading with benefits will always grab more attention and engagement from current and potential customers. It places them and their needs at the center of everything. Keep reading for more on this.
Features Versus Benefits
Let’s first discuss the difference between features and benefits.
Features are facts and specifications about your products or services. A benefit is how that feature is translated into improving your customer’s life.
Let’s use a laptop as an example. A feature would be 16 millimeter width while the benefit is that it’s easily transported for the on-the-go worker.
Feature: Built-in 49.9‑watt‑hour lithium‑polymer battery
Benefit: Go two work days without having to charge
Feature: Voice control, closed captions, and text to speech
Benefit: Accessibility features for people with disabilities
Get it?
Connect with the Reader’s Needs
Oftentimes, we’re so tied to our company and its products that we assume everyone can see how amazing it is and wants to know all of the ins and outs. But is knowledge enough to sell your products?
You don’t know what you don’t know. What I mean by this is maybe someone is interested in automating their emails (as a basic example) but knows nothing about marketing automation or CRMs. They’re going to say one thing when you tell them about all of the different features like ABM, revenue attribution reporting, and workflows versus email automation…
“Huh?“
You have two options: only lead with features and leave it up to the reader to interpret what it actually means for them OR lead with benefits so the value your company brings is front and center. You’re also opening up opportunities to clients who are looking for your solution and willing to pay for it but they just aren’t as well-versed to be able to understand the technical language around it.
Catering to Emotions
For some reason, lots of B2B companies think they’re exempt from the marketing tools and practices that B2C uses. But we’re all humans selling to other humans at the end of the day, right? B2B marketers are gradually shifting from a more “cold-blooded” approach that features specifications, product details, and product differentiators. But the truth is that whatever your company does, even as a B2B company, you provide some kind of emotional satisfaction and this should be included in your copy and marketing. Here are some questions you can ask:
What are your customers’ main pain points or complaints?
What do you provide to ease that pain?
How do you make their lives easier? It could be reducing stress, cutting costs, getting them more customers, or making their processes run more smoothly.
The annoyances and pain your company’s product or service takes away matter just as much, too. Maybe you offer automation software, for example, that takes away the headaches and tedious time spent manually carrying out a process by hand. Don’t just consider what you add to your customers’ lives but also the negatives that you take away and reduce.
Emotionally connected customers are:
More likely to be repeat customers
Less likely to be concerned with price
Engage with you more frequently
Trust your guidance
Recommend you to other people
When you place your customer at the center of everything and make your messaging about them, you are helping to speak to their pain points directly while building an emotional bond. This will help increase your profit and growth.
Action Items
Know your customers’ problems and how/why your company is the one that will provide the solution
Always ask “so what?” when writing to really get down to why people should care about what you’re saying
Use “we” and “I” less. It should be mainly “you”. If not, there’s an issue.
