It’s hard to read the label from inside the jar.
Unknown
One of the biggest mistakes a business can make when crafting their branding and marketing messaging is to focus on the things they think are best about their product—the features they are most proud of.
The truth is that your customer only cares about your company or your products if you can solve a very specific problem for them.
We’re all far too busy to pay attention to everything we’re bombarded with on a daily basis.
If you’re not addressing their problem front and center with all of your messaging, your potential customer will probably will never even notice you. If you’re not clearly explaining how your product will fix their issue, they will lose interest almost immediately.
You do this is by showing them how your product benefits them in the language they use when describing their problem to themselves and others.
Features vs Benefits
- A feature is the specifications your product has or what it does.
- A benefit is how it positively impacts your customer’s situation.
Using a list of features is boring to your audience and makes you look like all the other products screaming for their attention. Focusing on how your product directly benefits them by solving their problem cuts through the clutter and captures their interest.
To find the benefits that will be most meaningful and persuasive, you must get to know your customer very well through formal or informal research.
You need to develop a true picture of your customer—who they are, what they want, what they don’t want and where they get their information.
Focusing on what the company is proud of can even be a problem when a company hires an expensive marketing firm or advertising agency.
Too many of these agencies simply regurgitate what the company tells them, using pretty images and clever slogans without digging to discover what their client’s customers want to hear and need to see.
Try looking from the outside inward to see what is most important to your customers instead of projecting what your company thinks is important, and you will see a big boost to your bottom line as your customer count grows and sales volume increases.
So, what has been your experience with switching your marketing and branding from pushing the features of your product to demonstrating how your product benefits your customer?