Feature the Benefits: Achieving Product Success
By Dr. Arch (Keith) Barnes – March 1, 2011
As a young engineer, I made an early transition to marketing, was made responsible for training sales and management personnel on the technical aspects of our products (industrial and mining machinery). This was business-to-business, of course, where the buying decisions tend to be substantially more pragmatic than in the consumer arena, so the keys to success were in showing customers exactly how they would gain from buying our products. I came up with what I thought was a succinct and clever training edict for that setting; one that still has merit: “To Benefit from Features, Feature the Benefits.”
No one buys anything unless they think there is some gain to be made; that is axiomatic. What separates b-to-b marketing challenges (largely, but not exclusively) from those in the consumer-direct marketplace is that consumers’ gains are often intangible. The savvy buyer in an industrial setting (especially) wants to know exactly what your products and services will do to improve efficiencies, reduce headaches or maximize opportunity. The features of your product have to translate directly into such gains or there’s no incentive to buy from you, even with all the charms your sales people may possess.
Furthermore, even consumers do not buy many items just to own them… they have to see benefits. There are exceptions to this, of course, such as the oddly fascinating world of collectors (antiques, artworks, specialty and curiosities), but even there a partial motivation is often the potential gains from appreciation in value. No one buys an electric drill, though, simply to own the drill. They want what the drill will do for them. They may want the prestige (real or imagined) of owning a certain make of designer clothing, shoes by a famous maker or an automobile considered “luxury” class, to name just a few goods made mostly successful without having tangible benefits, but you get the message.
So what and how can we learn from these realities? Easily answered, but often difficult to apply such answers, this is the key to success in the whole process of bringing goods and services to market and in promoting them effectively... and in dropping items from your line when the time is right. So here are some general guidelines for readers to think about and apply to their own setting.
Don’t get hung up on the features of your products unless those features can be shown to serve some purpose(s) of direct benefit to your potential customers.
Do try hard to be honest about how your features stack up against those of your competitors, and find ways to modify or improve either the feature set of your own goods or offset the competitor’s advantages with other features you can legitimately claim to be of greater value.
Don’t forget that in most arenas today, things change rapidly. This is especially true in consumer electronics, for example, but very few products remain viable and equally valuable throughout their cycle of acceptability and/or desirability.
Do come to terms with exactly where your product(s) are in the inevitable cycle of marketplace desirability. Very few products can sustain high levels of sales forever, and you must be ready to transition to replacements when marketplace conditions are ripe. You can be proactive in this, or reactive, depending on your agility (but this is the topic of a later article).
Don’t forget that some low profitability items can have synergistic benefits for you, by absorbing overheads, for example, or fulfilling a full range of customer needs, etc., and must therefore remain in the mix of items you offer when past their peak of demand.
Do remember that your marketing messages should all consistently feature benefits… especially in b-to-b arenas, but that even so there is always an equally important key to your continued success: Integrity. The claims you make about benefits must prove reliable, and you must back them up in tangible (benefit-laden) ways.
Occasionally you can dally a little, when conforming to my edict most of the time, with teasers or fanciful ideas and “gingerbread” claims or promotions. One example that comes to mind is the classy and warmly received Christmastime TV commercials that Budweiser uses effectively. A horse doing remarkable things like retrieving the branch of a tree, like a dog, is purely fun and charmingly attractive). Such a sparingly used promo adds warmth and humanity to the invisible corporate face. But this too is a benefit of a different sort, isn’t it?
No one buys anything unless they think there is some gain to be made; that is axiomatic. What separates b-to-b marketing challenges (largely, but not exclusively) from those in the consumer-direct marketplace is that consumers’ gains are often intangible. The savvy buyer in an industrial setting (especially) wants to know exactly what your products and services will do to improve efficiencies, reduce headaches or maximize opportunity. The features of your product have to translate directly into such gains or there’s no incentive to buy from you, even with all the charms your sales people may possess.
Furthermore, even consumers do not buy many items just to own them… they have to see benefits. There are exceptions to this, of course, such as the oddly fascinating world of collectors (antiques, artworks, specialty and curiosities), but even there a partial motivation is often the potential gains from appreciation in value. No one buys an electric drill, though, simply to own the drill. They want what the drill will do for them. They may want the prestige (real or imagined) of owning a certain make of designer clothing, shoes by a famous maker or an automobile considered “luxury” class, to name just a few goods made mostly successful without having tangible benefits, but you get the message.
So what and how can we learn from these realities? Easily answered, but often difficult to apply such answers, this is the key to success in the whole process of bringing goods and services to market and in promoting them effectively... and in dropping items from your line when the time is right. So here are some general guidelines for readers to think about and apply to their own setting.
Don’t get hung up on the features of your products unless those features can be shown to serve some purpose(s) of direct benefit to your potential customers.
Do try hard to be honest about how your features stack up against those of your competitors, and find ways to modify or improve either the feature set of your own goods or offset the competitor’s advantages with other features you can legitimately claim to be of greater value.
Don’t forget that in most arenas today, things change rapidly. This is especially true in consumer electronics, for example, but very few products remain viable and equally valuable throughout their cycle of acceptability and/or desirability.
Do come to terms with exactly where your product(s) are in the inevitable cycle of marketplace desirability. Very few products can sustain high levels of sales forever, and you must be ready to transition to replacements when marketplace conditions are ripe. You can be proactive in this, or reactive, depending on your agility (but this is the topic of a later article).
Don’t forget that some low profitability items can have synergistic benefits for you, by absorbing overheads, for example, or fulfilling a full range of customer needs, etc., and must therefore remain in the mix of items you offer when past their peak of demand.
Do remember that your marketing messages should all consistently feature benefits… especially in b-to-b arenas, but that even so there is always an equally important key to your continued success: Integrity. The claims you make about benefits must prove reliable, and you must back them up in tangible (benefit-laden) ways.
Occasionally you can dally a little, when conforming to my edict most of the time, with teasers or fanciful ideas and “gingerbread” claims or promotions. One example that comes to mind is the classy and warmly received Christmastime TV commercials that Budweiser uses effectively. A horse doing remarkable things like retrieving the branch of a tree, like a dog, is purely fun and charmingly attractive). Such a sparingly used promo adds warmth and humanity to the invisible corporate face. But this too is a benefit of a different sort, isn’t it?