Engage Your Customer – Write About Benefits
By Glenn Murray | Advertising
Copywriter, Website
Copywriter, Article PR Specialist *
Think quick. In 10 seconds, can you list the 5 key
benefits you offer your customers?
I bet you said “Yes”. But are you sure you
listed benefits? If you’ll bear with me for another
10 seconds, I’d like to test out a theory on you.
Recap your answers – maybe even write them down.
Now list the 5 main things your business does. In other
words, what are your 5 core services? What are the 5
core features of your product?
If your first list looks anything like your second,
chances are you’re mistaking features for benefits.
As a result, it’s likely that your marketing materials
aren’t engaging your customer. Customers don’t
want to know what you can do. They want to know what
you can do FOR THEM.
Don’t talk features – talk benefits.
Don’t be alarmed. You’re not alone. Most
business owners and marketing managers are so close
to their product or service that they have a lot of
trouble distinguishing benefits from the features of
their offering. Ask a web host “what are the benefits
of your service?”, and you’ll likely hear
something along the lines of, “we offer load-balanced
server clusters.” But that’s not a benefit…
that’s what they do. The benefit is superior uptime
and performance.
In fact, so many people think features instead of benefits
that it can work in your favour – to dramatic effect.
If you can accurately identify your benefits, and convey
those benefits to your market, you’ll be light-years
ahead of most of your competition. You’ll be converting
leads into sales while they’re still bogged down
trying to promote features.
So if you’ve ever sat down to write a sales letter
and wondered how you’re going to grab your reader’s
attention, or you’ve ever gone ‘round in circles
writing draft after draft of web copy without ever hitting
the mark, now you know where you were going wrong.
The only question remaining is, how do you do it right?
Advertising copywriters and website copywriters do it
all the time – and most of the time, they do it
with benefits. Benefits are the copywriter’s holy
grail. But if you’re not a seasoned copywriter,
how do you identify the benefits you offer your customers?
There are any number of ways to identify the benefits
you offer. This article discusses just three:
- Customer Research
- Speak to Your Sales Team
- Make it Easy for Your Customer to Get Buy-In
The method you choose depends on your time constraints,
budget, and level of customer interaction.
1) Customer Research
The most obvious way to identify benefits is to ask
your existing customers. They’re spending a lot
of money on your offering, so you can be sure they know
what benefit they’re getting from it. (In many
cases, it can be handy to ask them what benefits they’d
like to be getting from you too!) Unfortunately, like
everyone else, your customers are busy people. In most
cases, you won’t get useful feedback by simply
sending an email enquiry. You have to make it easy for
them to respond, and you have to make it worth their
while. Think about questionnaires and surveys for quantitative
data, and interviews and focus groups for qualitative
data. These are the simplest techniques, but you still
have to make sure you interpret the results appropriately.
And always remember that they’re self-report methods.
People will sometimes tell you what they think you want
to hear. (That’s also why you have to word your
questions very carefully – try not to ask leading
questions.) Of course, there are plenty of other research
techniques around. Do a bit of homework and find the
methods which best suit your business requirements.
But don’t get carried away by the possibilities.
All the research data in the world is pointless if you’re
not talking the language of your customer.
2) Speak to Your Sales Team
Sadly, not every business can afford to invest in market
research. If your budget doesn’t stretch far enough,
try talking to your sales people. They’re out in
the field every day, talking to customers. And because
their livelihood depends on their success in engaging
customers, chances are they’ll be able to tell
you what your customers want to know. (A word of warning,
though… Be careful not to make lofty promises.
Unlike your sales team, written collateral doesn’t
generate a rapport with your customers. Customers won’t
make as many allowances, so you can only stretch the
truth so far in writing before your credibility suffers.
What’s more, if you do push the boundaries, you’re
more likely to be held to your word!)
3) Make it Easy for Your Customer to Get Buy-In
If you don’t have the budget for in-depth customer
research, and you don’t have a sales team, a good
tip is to imagine how your customer gets buy-in from
their boss. Quite often, the decision maker is someone
higher up the food chain than your direct audience.
Your audience will probably be the key stakeholder –
they’ll be the user of your product, or the recipient
of your service. But when they find an offering they
like, there’s a good chance they’ll have to
sell it to someone further up the line. If you can make
this sale easier, you’ll have a foot in the door.
Don’t just appeal to the sensibilities of the direct
audience. You also need to ask yourself what they need
to know to convince the decision maker. If the decision
maker is a CFO, think Return on Investment (ROI) and
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO). If the decision maker
is a CIO or MIS, think performance, technological sustainability,
availability, manageability, and ease of integration.
If the decision maker is a CEO, think liability, risk
management, and ROI. And only use jargon to prove you
know your stuff. Remember… jargon will probably
have the ultimate decision maker scratching their head,
not reaching for their cheque book.
There are many many more ways to identify benefits.
This is just a very superficial snapshot of some techniques
you might like to try. At the very least they’ll
get you thinking benefits.
In the end, the message is simple. Forget all the fancy
talk about complicated revolutionary marketing principles.
Forget new-age hard-sell advertising quick-fixes. Forget
looking to so-called “experts” for solutions.
Just think benefits. And if you can accurately do that,
the rest is just mechanics. Once you know what you want
to write about, you just need to put pen to paper. And
that’s a whole ‘nother story!
Happy writing!
* Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter, website copywriter, SEO copywriter, and article submission and article PR specialist. He heads copywriting studio, Divine Write, and is a director of article PR company, Article PR. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at
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. Visit http://www.DivineWrite.com or http://www.ArticlePR.com for further details, a FREE SEO eBook, or more FREE reprint articles.
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