Sell the steak and the sizzle

Let’s talk about marketing material and the fundamentals.

Good marketing sells features, benefits and has just enough aspirational statements.

Features are the properties of your product such as its size, colour, weight, how much electricity it uses. Etc.

Benefits are what using the product brings to the consumer. Examples include ‘spend less time cooking dinner’, ‘improved communication processes to bring better control over your business’, ‘press one button and the device makes the correct decision for you’, etc.

Aspirational statements are intangibles such as ‘ be the leader in your class’, ‘enhance your ability to affect change’, ‘be all that you can be’.  These statements call out to the dreamer inside all of us who wants to be better, smarter, respected, beautiful, etc. We all know it’s not really true, but by using products that say these things we do actually buy into the possibility.

If you only sell features, then your customers won’t know how to use your product or what it can do for them.

If you sell benefits and features then you are telling them what it is and how it can be used to their benefit.

If you sell the aspirational as well then you are just adding the icing to the cake. Sprinkle in odd words such as enhance, improve, etc. and anything else that may tap into your customer’s desires.

If you don’t feel comfortable with aspirational statements, you still need to sell the benefits and the features.