Must-Have ingredient - Marketing⁺

Must-Have ingredient – Marketing⁺ a collection of papers from PlannedSites for SME's

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself." - Peter F. Drucker

And the Must-Have ingredient is:

Benefits

In all these papers, because our research tells us this time and again, we urge you to think in terms of benefits. You’re marketing to potential clients and to potential staff.

Always think benefits – what benefits you can offer these two important components in your business life. You could do with three good benefits and they should appear in all your marketing.

By “good” we mean something solid and meaningful, not something wishy-washy and unmeasurable. We mean “we’ll reduce your tax bill”, not “we offer personal service”. Most potential clients will be swayed by benefits, and if done correctly, will get the impression that they are under the constant care of the best organisation in the business.

Don’t confuse benefits with features. Bang and Olufsen advertise a concert-going experience, not loads of transistors, diodes, printed circuit boards and sub-woofers. The loads of transistors, diodes, printed circuit boards and sub-woofers produce the concert-going experience; the features produce the benefit.

Benefits are all your readers are interested in.

(In his book “Ogilvy on Advertising” David Ogilvy (one of the most famous and successful advertising consultants of all time) drops this in, in the middle of a chapter on research: “Advertising which promises no benefit to the consumer does not sell, yet the majority of campaigns contain no promise whatsoever. (That is the most important
sentence in this book. Read it again.)”.)

Establishing three good benefits allows you to base your marketing on a solid foundation for several years. They should appear all over the place. They should become a mantra. In that way they will infiltrate all areas of your marketing and your practice.