When introducing potential customers to a product or service, PR professionals know they need to focus on benefits. Features are there to create some sort of gain for those who purchase whatever a company or individual is selling. Ideally, when a new product or service is launched, those behind it think in terms of benefits, be it real ones or just apparent ones – making people feel cool when they need to is just as much of a benefit as helping them grow their business.

We do consider benefits, and those clearly stated, to be a way to help sell more, increase brand awareness and get all the recognition a company deserves. Simply put, benefits return benefits – monetary gain, image boosts, new opportunities. Therefore, to become successful, you need to help your customers become successful.  Continue reading

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There’s been so much virtual ink spilled on building relationships on social media sites that one needs to be blind not to run across one article giving a few tips on the matter. Yet some still try their own obnoxious techniques that don’t work anyway.

One trend that I’ve recently notices and got an “oh, really?” from me was the following: add a friend, wait a bit for them to follow back and if they don’t, send them a message saying you’ll unfriend them if you’re unwilling to return the favor. Now how does that threat work? Simply put, it doesn’t.

The reason to friend or follow anyone is that you somehow find them interesting enough. If you want to get their attention, start a conversation with them, ask the right questions to get their attention and make them feel valued and interesting. They then might return the favor.

But if you act like and impatient, self-absorbed nuisance,  they will at best ignore you. Or choose to block you all together or report you. Why risk that when you can spend 5 minutes forgetting about what you want and think of what other people need. They will definitely respond in a much more pleasant manner than they would in the case of virtual blackmail!

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I remember hearing a lot of people say that getting stuck in features is a bad marketing idea. You can pimp features as much as you like, you can make them sound cooler or fancier than ever before, people will still not care. Why? Because unless it is translated into a benefit, a feature is worthless.

It is true that there are features that we instantly associate a certain value and benefit to, but those cases are rare and they only do half of the job in the end. For example, we all know that many Gigabytes on your hardware means lots of docs, software, movies and mp3s can be stored on it. So the more they are, the better. We’re used to it and after the presentation of a computer catches our eye, we hunt down features like this one.

Gold and silver are instantly associated with a significant price. More than fake bling blings anyway. That might sell a jewelry, not as well as saying the X silver necklace will make you look classy or something similar.

Now, let’s take an air conditioning systems vendor. A high-end one, not a cheap brand with no marketing budget or the right people to handle their communication strategy. And the nice, cool differentiator and stand out bling for their product: a silver-containing filter!

How does the silver help? If they don’t explain, most people will automatically think they’ll pay more for useless, expensive metals Which would be cool for some, if the case of the AC machine would be made of silver! But who cares there is silver in the filter? Except some chemists or AC specialists, no one will know what the benefit is. Some might simply imagine there must be a benefit added, but will it be a strong enough hunch to make them buy?

So the basic idea when presenting your product is simple: to get maximum results, emphasize some quality of the product or service that makes buyers’ lives easier, funnier, more relaxed, simply said what can you do to make their lives better?

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