The Edge Marketing

Measuring the benefit of your product or service means putting a specific value on the advantage it offers. For example, it’s ineffective to say your light bulbs are brighter and last longer than the competition’s. You’ve got to let people know that they’re 50% brighter and last two times as long! Your dry cleaning methods aren’t just better, they’re three times more likely to remove stubborn stains than traditional methods. Your chiropractic techniques aren’t just effective, they’re clinically proven to reduce back pain for 95% of patients. And so on.

The more specific you are about the superior performance, benefit, or advantage of your product or service, the more successful your marketing message will be, regardless of the medium you use. The reason is simple: Consumers hear claims of product superiority all the time. They’ve become immune. They’ve learned to tune out this generic fluff.

But a specific claim carries much more weight. It gives credibility to your arguments. It resonates with the potential purchaser and makes your claim stand out from the rest.

Think about it. All other things being equal, if you're buying a product or a service and one does very little for you and one does seemingly two or three times more for you, which one are you going to buy? The choice is simple.

But how do you measure the value of your product or service? Start by examining what goes into your product or service. If you are not the manufacturer or creator of it, you must go to whomever is, you must go to the source. Ask them to share with you all their data, all the clinical, technical, research, testing, and compatibility data they may have accumulated on the product or service in application.

You need to focus on three things:

1. What was the product engineered to do and why?

2. What components went into it to assure that it would perform?

3. What process did they go through to create the product or service?

In other words, if the purpose of a manufacturer’s pipe is to transport fluid underground and last for 30 years, what makes the manufacturer think it will do that? Well, they probably tested it. They probably manufactured it with material that was corrosion-proof and resistant to freezing under temperatures far below zero. You’ve got to find out all those factors.

In addition, you’ve got to analyze the process that was necessary to create the product or service. For example, if you own a clothing store, perhaps you traveled 20 times around the country and attended over 60 different trade shows to find the best merchandise, or get the best values for your customers. Perhaps you looked at 150 separate manufacturing lines to be able to choose 25 that were unique and fashionable enough to be sold in your store.

Once you have analyzed what went into the creation or production of the your product or service, the next thing you want to do is ask, “How does it compare against the competition. For example, if you are offering a suit that’s $500 and a competitor is offering a suit that’s $500 But yours is made with 25% silk If that difference is something that adds value, you should say so.

Remember, however, that it’s very important to translate value into an end-result benefit for your customer. In other words, don’t just say that because the suit is made of 25% silk it is better. That may be true but unless your customer is a tailor, It’s a meaningless claim. You have to explain to your customer that the 25% silk content will make the suit hold its shape better, respond to dry cleaning better, last an average of 50% longer for the same amount of money.

Don’t sell the features for any reason other than for their logical connection to a benefit or a result. The only reason features are even relevant is because they are a conduit, or a bridge for you to take the customer over to reach a bottom-line benefit. For example, if you’re selling flat screen or plasma televisions, what is the ultimate benefit? The benefit may be four times more clarity or four times more realistic picture than any other screen you can buy for up to twice the money. You’ve got to look at it that way, translating the feature into a tangible benefit for the customer.

When comparing your product or service to your competitors, according to customer survey results, the most effective comparisons deal with performance. The second most effective factor is composition, the components, elements, or ingredients. This is followed by the process that went into creating it, and lastly, the design or standards on which it’s based.

Although, these survey results apply most directly to products it also applies to services as well. For example, an accountant, may promote that he or she will save you 45% off of your annual tax bill which is the most effective (performance). Slightly less effective would be a claim that he or she would focus on 12 specific deductions that are often overlooked (composition). And even less effective would be if the accountant states that he or she has more than 400 hours of continuing education thereby keeping up on the latest accounting techniques (process).

Never overlook the value that your existing customers can give you. Interview them in person or in phone. You can have them complete questionnaires in the customer only section of your Web site or simply e-mail a customer questionnaire to them.

Explain to them that you want to know how your product or service performs in their own personal experience. In the interview or the questionnaire start off by taking them back to a time before they were using your product or service, when they were using either an alternative or nothing at all. Find out what it was like for them. The best part of getting information directly from you customers, is that, in the process, you are going to get excited about the value, benefit, and meaning you make in a customer’s life. And as you get more excited, you are going to sell with more certainty, conviction, and passion.

You’re going to realize, maybe for the first time, that your product or service adds enormous, tangible, and measurable meaning to someone’s life. The sooner you measure the value and benefits of your product or service, the sooner your bottom line will begin to skyrocket!

Copyright© 2005 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

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