If your sole purpose in marketing is to tell customers how awesome your products are, you could be shortchanging your products and your customers.
Why? Because your products are more than cutting-edge technologies and top-quality materials. They’re more than parts and plans, more than paper and packaging.
Your products are solutions.
Your products solve customers’ problems. They help them get jobs done quicker and better. They make life more convenient. They make customers feel better about themselves, their houses, their jobs, their property. They eliminate pain—financial, physical, or psychological.
Your products do something tangible. Emotional. Good.
Focusing on the solution–or the benefit–your product provides gives customers an immediate reason to keep reading, whether it’s your direct mail letter, brochure, or email.
To sell not just a product but a solution, you need to first understand what your customers want. What they really want.
No one necessarily wants a compact printer with six ink cartridges, but they do want to be able to get more bang for their buck when it comes to purchasing ink cartridges. Likewise, no one buys a self-propelled mower because they want a fancy motor. They buy it because they live on a hill and don’t want to strain and struggle to push the mower up the hill every week if they don’t have to.
Once you identify what will help your customer, make an emotional connection. Appeal to their struggles. Acknowledge their pain. Then, you can tell them about the features of your product that make it better than your competitors. It’s then that you can sell your customer on the marvels of the product.
An amazing product will sell. An amazing product, sold through the eyes and needs of a customer will sell well.