2. UNIQ Online Marketing Module 4 Features, Benefits and ResultsBang for your Buck www.soUNIQ.co.uk
3. Welcome to Module 4! This module is all about customer benefits, in essence what your customers get for their money or ‘bang for their buck’, as they say in America. Benefits are the only things your customers actually care about. Once you get this right you will experience the best part of marketing - the point at which price becomes irrelevant. www.soUNIQ.co.uk
4. Caution! Often times what a person thinks is a benefit is in fact a feature. Benefit? Feature? Feature? Benefit? Feature? Benefit? www.soUNIQ.co.uk
5. There have been two significant changes that have recently occurred in the features and benefits process: 1. The features and benefit process now includes a third step - results 2. The way we communicate and delivery benefits is different www.soUNIQ.co.uk
10. Benefits, Features and Results What are they and how do they differ? A customer benefitis a description of how your product or service meets the needs and desires of your customer. A feature is simply a description of the service or product in part or as a whole. www.soUNIQ.co.uk
11. Do not make your customer have to figure out the true benefit! A 24-hour helpline is NOT a benefit because it does not tell me in any way how it meets my needs or desires. The true benefit of a 24-hour helpline could be, “Have peace of mind knowing that when you need an answer or help with resolving an issue we will be available 24/7 to give you a solution.” www.soUNIQ.co.uk
13. Personal Service as a benefit is a thing of the past. It is vague and general and almost every company claims they offer it. This is not a point of differentiation or even worth saying. It may sound nice, but would it make you buy? www.soUNIQ.co.uk
14. Results There are two important parts to results in this context: 1. How you deliver the result 2. What tangible, deliverable results will your customers receive having purchased your product or service www.soUNIQ.co.uk
15. The recession has caused customers to be more cynical. Marketers and business owners used to get away with more by whitewashing and glossing over facts. Nowadays we have to be honest, transparent and absolutely clear in our detailed explanations of how our customers will benefit from our products and services – hence the third element being results. www.soUNIQ.co.uk
16. Why is any of this important to my business and marketing? Again, benefits are theonly thing your customers care about. Imagine that you have the choice of two pairs of golf shoes and one is considerably more expensive than the other. You would want to know not only that it will improve your golf game, but how it will do that. www.soUNIQ.co.uk
17. Before the recession we believed the banks were safe, trustworthy and credible companies. We considered them to be a major part of our British institution. When it all began to unravel, what we really lost was trust. Not just trust in the bank, but trust in corporate companies and big brands we had always believed in. www.soUNIQ.co.uk
18. We have to work even harder to earn trust and we can do so by clearly communicating and delivering our customer benefits. Trust www.soUNIQ.co.uk
19. You also have to live, breathe and reinforce your benefits in every single customer interaction and marketing activity you do. www.soUNIQ.co.uk
20. What happens next? Next lesson: How to create your own list of great customer benefits and results. Once you get it right you’ll find that your customers want to buy from you, which will save you from having to do the hard sell. www.soUNIQ.co.uk
21. Additional Resources To find out more about aims, objectives and goals, login to www.souniq.co.uk and access exclusive articles from our library. For more information on Features vs. Benefits you might find the following external articles useful:- Benefits vs. Features How To Use The 5 Whys To Extract Benefits From Features The Power Of Benefits Marketing Your Small Business www.soUNIQ.co.uk
22. For help and support with Module 4, Lesson 1, contact me, Ruth McKay: Email: ruth@souniq.co.uk Tweet: @UNIQ_Academy LinkedIn: UNIQ Discussion Group We’d really like to know what you think of this lesson so please spare us two minutes to answer 5 short questions and tell us what you really think. Next week: Lost in Translation www.soUNIQ.co.uk
