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The Core Marketing Truth

What's in it for me?

That's what any prospective customer wants to know. It's the benefits that answer that question, not the features. You must communicate the benefits of your product or you will miss a lot of sales. It is the one marketing truth you cannot ignore.

Anyone making a buying decision wants to know how the product will benefit them more than what it will do specifically.

People are self-interested by nature, that's just the way we are wired. Online their self-interest is often more pronounced because they visit our websites from the privacy of their home or office. No one is present to judge them for thinking or acting selfishly. They don't care about you or what you're trying to accomplish . . . they care about themselves.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

Now, they may learn to care about you and what you're doing, but that comes later, if at all. First though, the only thing related to you that they care about is what you can do for them. That may sound harsh, but it's also true.

Any good marketing course, article, or book will all tell you the same thing when it comes to writing a great sales letter: Tell your customers what's in it for them.

Your visitors don't want to hear about you unless it's highly relevant to how your product can benefit them—and even then keep the "you" talk to a minimum.

Something that helped me write sales pages before I retired was to go back after writing the first draft and look for every use of the word "I" and try to find a way to take the focus off of me and put it on a benefit, a specific result, or on the reader.

Another thing you will commonly hear is to list the benefits of your product, not the features. People buy benefits. Benefits are all about feeling and image. Features are about logic and reason. Top copywriters, those who get paid $10,000 or more to write one sales letter, tell us that people decide to buy based on emotions, and if necessary, justify their decision with reason.

Feature:

Feature Translated to a Benefit:

Do you see how that works? A technical detail was translated into peace of mind. By thinking of realistic ways to appeal to your prospects emotions, you move the dialog closer to their real reasons for making purchases. If you feel the details are important you can offer them in a sidebar or FAQ.

To paraphrase Roy Rogers, "Happy sales to you, until we meet again."