Your customers don’t buy shampoo; they buy clean and manageable hair. My clients don’t by a custom blog design, they buy higher profits and better branding. It’s simple; people hire you because of what you can do for them, not what you do. This might sound a bit confusing, but if you stand back for a minute and really think about it, it’s true. You don’t go to the store and buy toothpaste; you buy clean teeth and fresh breath. This holds true in any business online or offline.
If you’re freelancing full time, or you run your own small business, remembering this and building your marketing around it can really make or break your campaign. Focusing on the nuts and bolts of what your company does rather then what the end result is for the customer will not only hurt your sales, but your branding will suffer as well. For the average Search Engine Optimization company, their central focus is “your website will be #1 in Google for *this keyword*” yet if they were to stop proclaiming this and explain the 20-30 steps they take in order to make your website #1 for a specific keyword, they would surely lose clients and drive away any potential clients who are looking for the benefit, not the feature. Always remember that your clients hire you because of what you can give them and not necessarily what it takes you to get to that point, so exploit it for all its worth and make sure that is what you talk about in your marketing and copywriting.
Your software could have 300 cool features built in, and all kinds of extra additions that can be customized to the clients requests, but in the end, if your software doesn’t benefit your customer, or if the customer doesn’t know what it can do to benefit them, you’re losing out on that sale. Fluff is overrated.
* Editors note: Every monday we will be featuring a quick marketing tip like this, so make sure you subscribe to our feed to stay up to date with our newest articles.
May 19th, 2008 at 3:42 pm
It makes perfect sense, yet I have not thought about this at all. Of course, I’m no marketing major, so I think I’ll be following you a bit.
Thanks for the great advice!
May 19th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
Hi Wayne, thanks for the comment and thanks for following me for a bit. I’ve got another article in line for tomorrow that’s going to be great. Building an effective guerrilla marketing strategy. subscribe so you don’t miss it
May 19th, 2008 at 7:26 pm
Well, marketing something that can be easily digested is better than explaining them the process.
May 21st, 2008 at 3:55 pm
oooooh ofcourse.
May 21st, 2008 at 4:20 pm
Thanks for the information and will be following up on that
as everybody wants to improve their business and the marketing
specialist know best
February 11th, 2009 at 9:54 pm
Enoyed your post and bookmarked you for future reading.. Thinking of adding some of your content to my website ZestforMarketing
February 13th, 2009 at 11:00 pm
Thanks for the comment Mike, I have taken a look and bookmarked your blog as well. Outstanding strategies to be implemented and used.
March 11th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Thenx for the advice. I have realized that we’ve been forcusing on features in most cases and therefore we tend to loose many client who are in need of benefits. I have now noticed where I mess. Keep up and kindly educate us more.
March 17th, 2009 at 11:38 am
Thank you very much for the tip bits; I find them so useful. Not too much info just enough to keep me focused and inspired. Keep reminding me
March 18th, 2009 at 1:04 am
Hey Colin,
Glad we can be of help. Let me know if you would like to see anything specifically covered.
Cheers,
Derek
April 4th, 2009 at 12:09 am
A subtle and powerful subtlety…I’ll remember it and finesse it into my vision.
S.Smith’s last blog post..Teaching Abstractions