What’s in it for me?

What’s in it for me?

That’s the question that pops up in the minds of your customer and potential customers when they hear about your product. They want to know what they can do with your product, and how your product intends to benefit them.

And that’s why you should focus on selling the benefits of your products, not the features.

You see the ad for an iphone 12 and they are showing you how you can capture clear amazing memories because their video camera is awesome. Meanwhile, what actually makes the camera awesome is the fact that it shoots 4K video at 24, 30 or 60 frames per second, and can encode 4K Dolby Vision HDR video at up to 30 fps for wider dynamic range and an improved viewing experience on displays that support the standard.

Don’t ask me to decode that. I got it straight off the web.

Just like me, I’m sure you don’t know what all that means and truly, you might not even care. Well, if you don’t know what it means, you actually don’t care about all that. Only technically inclined people will be concerned by all that and not all of us are. We just want great phones.

Apple knows full well that not all their customers really care about knowing the details of the features. As a matter of fact, most of their customers don’t. What the customers care about is the fact that they can capture great pictures and videos with it.

Armed with this information, they go ahead to focus on marketing and selling the benefits of using the phone, not the features. The customer is then paying for a great video camera, not the 4K video at 24/30/60 fps.

You should do the same.

When marketing your products, put the spotlight on the benefits, not the features.

You don’t see Coca Cola telling you that there is carbonated water, caramel coloring, caffeine and phosphoric acid inside the drink. They simply show you how refreshed you will be when you drink it and how you can share happiness simply by drinking and “sharing a coke”.

People don’t really care if you have put flour, milk, egg, sugar, etc into the dough. They simply want to eat a really tasty doughnut.

A feature is something that the product has, distinctive attributes of the product. Benefits on the other hand are the things the product offers to satisfy the customer’s needs, wants and desires. Benefits consist of what the consumer expects to get by using the product. In plain terms, it is what is in for the consumer.

Truth is, sometimes, customers actually look at the features of the product.

But while looking at the features, they are not looking at it as just features, their mind is immediately translating it to benefits. They are not exactly seeing the features as features, since they can translate the features to benefits.

This whole writeup is not to dissuade you from talking about the features of your products. It is simply telling you to highlight the benefits more, as that is what the customer really cares about.

It’s actually necessary sometimes to talk about the product features alongside the benefits.

Take for instance, the iphone 12. The phone can take great videos because of the type of processor and video hardware put into it. So, while they show you the awesome video quality, they tell you it’s because of the great hardware in it.

When a smartphone like Tecno Pouvoir 4 with a 6000MAH battery wants to advertise, they will tell you that the phone can last up to 4 days, because of the powerful 6000MAH battery they put in it.

But for a product like Coca Cola, they really don’t have to tell you that there is caramel coloring or caffeine or carbonated water in it. They simply have to sell the benefits, the way you will feel after drinking a cold bottle of coke.

Bottom line is this, based on the kind of product or service you offer, you should know how best to make your audience know what’s in it for them.

For instance, what’s in it for you in this article?

All this information, when applied to your business will most likely get you more sales.

That’s the benefit.