What’s in it for your customer?
There’s no big secret to writing ad copy that gets customers to buy.
Just focus on letting them know what’s in it for them!
All businesses provide a benefit to their customers. Very few businesses take the time to make the benefit memorable by mentioning what the benefit means to the consumer on an emotional, visceral or experiential level—the payoff.
The products, goods and services of most companies have great features and impressive benefits, but until the business speaks to the payoff of the feature/benefit—the customer won’t see what is in it for them. Advertisments and website copy are most effective when they are exclusively focused on telling the consumer what’s in it for them. Providing that last bit of experiential information is a potent driver of the purchase process.
EXAMPLE: This car has a 5.0 liter V8 engine (the feature) will take you from 0-60 in just 4.5 seconds (the benefit)—giving you a heart-pounding rush of acceleration (the payoff that connects the consumer to the product on a visceral/emotional level).
Many small businesses have limited marketing budgets, and that makes it difficult for them to justify focusing on just one feature/benefit/payoff in each individual advertisement. And that’s okay. But if the business must speak to multiple-feature/benefit/payoffs it’s even more important that those features are relevant to solving a single consumer concern.
Here is an example —there are a great number of safety related features on cars today. Mentioning several of those safety features in a single execution will likely have a lower impact in terms of subjective payoff than if you were to speak about just one of those features. But, speaking to those multiple feature/benefit/payoffs will grab the attention of a target audience for whom safety is a big concern. So there is a balance to be struck, and it depends on the interests of your target audience.
The biggest problem that I see in the ads and website copy of small businesses appears to be the result of business concerns seeping into ads when the ad should be exclusively concerned with the problems of the consumer.
Hopefully, it will seem obvious to you that the consumer who is interested in buying a product does NOT care that the small business owner who manufactures the product wants to grow annual sales by 3%. And the consumer doesn’t care that the manufacturer has a limited ad budget. They want to know what’s in it for them. And the closer you can bring them to experiencing your products, goods and services on a subjective level—the more likely you are to see positive results.
Feature/benefits/payoff connections are a little different in marketing B2B. The conditions which drive B2B purchases are often benefits like ROI, easy of use, cost, time to train people on new equipment—all of which are quantifiable/knowable benefits.
I believe that business people spend so much time dealing with what’s quantifiable in their day-to-day work that they sometimes forget that consumers are looking for experiential benefits—the so called intangibles.
Bottom line: Speak to your consumer in their voice, about their concerns, using visuals which are relevant to them—and always communicate what’s in it for them beyond the quantifiable/tangible benefit.
