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Number
57: June 16, 2004
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This week in Katydid:
Composing
Value Statements
According to the American Marketing Association's Marketing
Dictionary, a product benefit is, "The value provided to
a customer by a product feature." It also defines value as
"The power of any good to command other goods in peaceful and
voluntary exchange."
When you use words like benefit and value so often, they tend to lose
their meaning as these definitions from the AMA show. They tend to be
circular or tautological and not very illustrative. If we pull back a
little and look at the American Heritage Dictionary's definitions. Benefit
is "Something that promotes or enhances well-being; an
advantage." It defines value
as, "An amount … considered to be a fair and suitable equivalent
for something else; a fair price or return."
Pulling back a little further to the original Middle English and Old
French roots, benefit means "a good deed," and value means,
"to be strong, be worth." These older, deeper meanings tend to
bring out the heart of a word and restore its meaning.
Bringing these back to our AMA definitions, a product benefit could
be revised to mean "the good deed we do that makes our customer
stronger or more valuable." Note that this is not what makes us
stronger or more worthy; it is focused on the customer.
Every marketer I've met understands the need to communicate benefit
and value and most understand that you need to put it in terms of
benefit to the customer. However, when it gets down to composing value
and benefit statements, many writers slip back into writing feature
lists. One reason for this is that there are many cases where we can
assume the audience knows the benefit of the feature.
One example comes from a marketing line in an old cigarette campaign,
"Lowest tar of all low-tar cigarettes." Beginning in the 50's
health concerns about tobacco began to emerge and tar became a leading
target. Cigarette
makers began to tout their lower levels of tar as a significant
benefit. The marketers could assume that their audience believed that
the value to them of lower tar was increased health.
Setting aside for a moment the fact that "low
tar" is a misleading term, the real benefactor of this kind of
assumption is the company promoting the product because it often lets
them differentiate themselves without having to address the downsides of
a value: cigarettes with low tar are less likely to kill you, or they
will kill you more slowly than other brands.
An example that takes advantage of a cultural assumption (internal
and external) is the Dodge campaign, "Yeah,
it's got a HEMI." A HEMI engine is simply one where the
cylinder head has a hemispherical shape. There are many engineering
advantages to this shape, chief among these are increased power and
performance. However, many other engine designs produce equal or better
performance and engineers make tradeoffs depending on the use of the
engine.
In this case, Dodge is evoking our memory of the Chrysler engines of
the 50's, 60's, and 70's. The target customer probably has little idea
what a HEMI is; however, it sounds powerful.
Therefore, it is possible to create entire campaigns around a feature
as long as the target audience universally assumes the benefit. These
campaigns take advantage of an educated (or sadly misinformed) customer
base.
We have to work from assumptions all the time, but you should
carefully document them so your team works from the same set. However,
it is stronger to compose benefit statements that truly show "the
good deed we do that makes our customers stronger."
One way to make this easier is to change the subject of the sentence.
Most benefit statements begin with the company as the subject of the
sentence: "XYZ Company is…." You can still put your company
at the beginning of the sentence but shift the focus to your customer by
making them the subject: "With XYZ Company, you can…"
Now, not all your sentences have to start that way for final copy.
The focus is for your internal development. This structure helps you to
think of ways your customers will use your product or service to become
stronger. You can still differentiate by being more specific: "With
XYZ Company, you reduce undercharges by 20%." You can also connect
the value to specific features: "XYZ customers reduce undercharges
by more than 20% with XYZ's end-to-end tracking."
The trick now is to make the value something meaningful to the
customer so that they will continue the value chain. If you fill in that
value chain for the customer, you will end up with some version of,
"You'll be more profitable." This is why so many B2B marketing
campaigns rest on value statements of increased ROI, which are not
distinctive. In our example, XYZ Company knows they could be more
profitable if they can reduce undercharges. Benefit statements framed
this way really show your customer how they can be more
profitable, reduce ROI, and increase sales.
Essentially, your benefit statements tell a story with your customers
as the hero of that story. The more you can help them imagine themselves
being successful using your product, the more likely they will be to
choose your product. That good deed will reap large rewards for you.
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Kind regards,
Kevin Troy Darling
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