marketing dictionary: benefits, not features

It's very easy, when you own or run a business of any size, to start to think that your business (or your church, your hobby, or even your nonprofit) is terribly important.

You know how hard you work every day. You see how hard it is to find customers, and the fact that you've found any at all is pretty exciting. You worked like a crazy person to create a product or a service that is as good as you can make it.

Customers don't care.

It would be great if they did, but they just don't. Essentially, they're toddlers. They only care about their own needs, and any sacrifices you make for them are invisible.

Is your offering slightly hard to use? They don't want it. Slightly complicated? They don't want it. Too many steps to go through your shopping cart system? They don't want it.

Your customers will never know how much sweat and heartache went into creating your business, and they will never care. That's not their role.

If you think this is the perfect time to launch a small business, you're right! Economic shake-ups are the very best time to get businesses rolling.

But starting a business from scratch is intimidating. I put together a post for you on the first steps that will get you moving toward success.

14 Must-Have Resources to Get Your Small Business Off the Ground

And if you're not sure this is the right time, read my post on why this is the best time to finally break free.

Take a look at the video above. It's always interesting to run across an ad that points so directly to a problem with a product offering.

Someone at Compass Bank was very jazzed about how many great services they offer, and thought it would be cool to create a configurable package of them for a checking account. They have 17 features, and you get to pick which ones you want.

If you're the bank, this sounds great. So flexible! So cool!

But like the hapless guy in the ad, their customers may have another take. "This sounds like homework. I don't have time to balance my checkbook, when am I going to feel like sitting down and making decisions about 17 different checking features? What if I pick the wrong ones? Why can't I just have all of them?"

The bank got caught up in thinking about how neat they were, instead of thinking about what would be great for customers.

For a more positive example from the same company, this commercial shows a clear benefit of the program. It's a short, interesting story that demonstrates something cool the bank will do for you. Customers instantly understand how it benefits them.

In the Compass bank example, I don't think their customers have an "I wish I could configure my checking account" problem.

But once they find out that they can put whatever photo they want on their check card, they might have a "no picture of my hot boyfriend on my check card" problem.

You have to solve customers' problems in order to market to them. You don't always have to stick with the problems they already know they have.

Fundamentally, we do things because we want an emotional payoff. Chocolate, charity work, diamonds, vacations in Maui, college investment accounts--we seek them out because we like the way they make us feel.

Different people feel good about different stuff, and that's where it gets interesting. You need to know what makes your customers feel good, and what about your product creates good feelings.

• Alarm systems sell because people want to feel safe and secure.
• Marketing advice sells because people want to feel proud of their success and relaxed about their finances.
• iPods sell because people want to feel a sense of belonging by taking part in a powerful trend.
• iPods also sell because people want to feel smarter than at least one piece of technology in their lives.
• El Rey paintings sell because people enjoy the way it feels to laugh without knowing why.
• Leonard Cohen albums sell because people want to feel brainy and neurotic in an attractive way. They also sell because a certain level of wallowing in misery is, in fact, quite pleasurable, especially when it's someone else's.

For more about how to market using emotional benefits, check out a pair of posts I wrote for Copyblogger:

Why Emotional Benefits Are the Key to Reader Response
13 Emotion-Based Headlines That Work

You'll want to use every communication trick in your arsenal to get benefits across to your customers. One of the most important is show, don't tell. Paint the picture of how great your customers' lives will be after they get your product. Use vivid language. Don't just say, "you're gonna love it." Show them, in compelling and concrete detail, what it will be like when they love it.

When you're showing, you want to look out for the verb to be. Compare the following:

I am happy / I dance with happiness. Our customers are satisfied / Our customers rated us the #1 Tire Dealer with Heart ten years in a row. Your family will be happy / Your family will vote you mom of the year. Read more >>

Focus on benefits is especially important if you're in charge of a nonprofit. You need to understand what makes your donors feel good, and give them more of it.

Smiletrain.org is a great example. They promise the feeling of knowing that you, individually, have saved one child from social isolation and malnutrition. That will cost you $250. They pay for overhead out of their foundation grant, so your entire donation goes to cleft palate surgery for a child somewhere whose parents can't afford it.

After you make a donation, you get the "reward" of seeing marketing materials that feature children after surgery has restored them. (Their "pre-donor" materials all feature children before the surgery.)

The benefit to the children is very obvious. The benefit to their donors, though, isn't saving the life of the child, it's the feeling donors get knowing that we have contributed to that. I can tell you from experience that that feeling is addictive.

You can find other entries in the marketing dictionary in the "lensroll" to the right.

The remarkable communication blog
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The remarcom lens on Squidoo
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Fast, cheap, and very much in control: 21st century techniques to grow your business
More on using the web, blogs, email newsletters, and other Internet tools to promote your business.

How to create symbols on your blog, Web site, or Squidoo lens with HTML numeric codes
How to display the euro symbol, yen symbol or other unusual character on your Web site or lens.