How to Effectively Communicate to Customers
Nobody cares about how long you’ve been in business, or where you started out; they care about what can help their own business.
You must *explicitly* communicate the benefits of your product or service to your customer. You may have heard this before, but this really is where so many businesses go wrong.
Understanding how to effectively communicate the benefits is the bedrock of marketing your business. You can spend all the money you want on websites, leaflets and advertising, but if you don’t forcefully and continually communicate precisely how your prospective customer is going to benefit from what you offer, it’s not going to be as effective, and you’re almost certainly wasting your hard-earned cash!
Firstly, let’s get clear on the difference between features and benefits.
If you’re buying a set of speakers, for example, the watts coming out of each speaker is a feature. Now the fact that the speakers will deliver a sound that will make you feel like you’re at a concert is the benefit. The memory on your computer is a feature, the fact that it’s large enough to let you surf the web faster is a benefit. The benefit is what’s in it for your customer, as opposed to the actual feature of the product/service.
Which is where so many businesses go wrong; they focus on the features rather than the benefits. Now, you need to know that people do not generally buy just on features; they buy the benefits. By all means, tell people the features of your product/service; it could help establish credibility, but it’s just not enough to achieve amazing business growth.
So, let’s get on to an example of how you can incorporate features and benefits without being too obvious about it. Let’s say we need a solicitor to help us sell our house. We look at a few websites; they all say the same thing. They all talk about how long the solicitor has been in business, and list all of the areas they can help you on. Remember; this list is a list of features. To stand out from the rest of the crowd, the solicitor wants to explain the benefits that their service offers. For example, they could say something like this;
“Our combined 100 years in conveyancing (Feature) means that we have the legal knowledge and negotiating skills to do everything possible to stop the sale falling through during those tricky periods. (Benefit)
You can increase your response rate by 100s% simply by turning a standard website that goes on and on about the company, into a website that is designed to give the customer exactly what they want.
So, here’s your Action Step; Sit down and come up with the three main benefits that your customers experience when they do business with you. If you don’t know what your benefits are, chances are your customers don’t either, and that means you are massively under-performing. Also, look ruthlessly at all of your marketing materials; if you go more than 3 or 4 lines without telling the customer how they will benefit, start again. Nobody cares about how long you’ve been in business, or where you started out; they care about what’s in it for them.