Features vs Benefits

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the May 26, 2010 @ 10:20 am

Whilst your product has features, or your service business has things it’s good at, turning these into statements that would get your customer’s attention is a key marketing challenge.

So what’s the difference between a feature and a benefit?

Features

A feature is a factual statement about the product or service being promoted:

• 100% cashmere
• 24 hours service
• Fleet of over 100 vehicles
• See over 100 reports
• 50-number speed dial
• Automated expenses

Benefits

A benefit takes this statement and asks ‘So, what’s in it for me?’

• 100% cashmere means that it feels wonderfully soft against your skin
• 24 hours service means that there’s always someone there to help you
• Fleet of over 100 vehicles which means that we’ll be with you quicker
• See over 100 reports which means that you’ll have all the information you could need
• 50-number speed dial which means that you will have fewer keystrokes
• Automated expenses which means that you can process expense claims quicker

This is good but we can make these statements even better. What are the results? These could be tangible (if possible), emotional (how does it make you feel), or aspirational (what does it give you?) so:

• 100% cashmere means that it feels wonderfully soft against your skin which makes you feel great
• 24 hours service means that there’s always someone there to help you which gives you freedom
• Fleet of over 100 vehicles which means that we’ll be with you quicker which makes you feel more confident
• See over 100 reports which means that you’ll have all the information you could need which gives you control
• 50-number speed dial which means that you will have fewer keystrokes which gives you the ability to keep in touch with your best customers without effort
• Automated expenses which means that you can process expense claims quicker which gives you two extra days a month to do your job

Once devised…market your benefits, not your features.

WordPress, Joomla (Open Source) as a CMS – why wouldn’t you?

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the May 21, 2010 @ 10:43 am

In 2010 many SMEs want to be able to update their website themselves. In the earlier days of web design this wasn’t possible without knowledge of HTML programming or spending a fortune on a content management system.

Nowadays, content management systems (CMS) are king. This post provides an argument as to why you should use a CMS and helps you choose which one. It is written from experience and reflects our opinions.

A CMS gives you, the customer, the ability to update the content on your website through easy to use forms. No editing code, just simply click a few buttons and you can add new pages, change the navigation and add text and images yourself. If you want to be able to update a website and not pay a developer to do it you need a CMS. They are also great for search engines.

Choosing a CMS

The first decision to make is do you use an open source (i.e. free) CMS like WordPress or Joomla or a proprietary one, built by a company. We’ve seen both and tested both. Despite everything a sales person will say about their proprietary CMS we haven’t seen one yet which matches the capabilities of the open source ones. What’s more you pay for the privilege to use these ‘sub-standard’ systems.

Why open source is better

• Being open source means anyone has access to the source code behind the CMS and can improve it. With the best developers all over the world doing this; thousands of users providing feedback every day and frequent new releases  the products are improving all the time
• Not only do you get the CMS for free, developers create plugins for the CMS. A plugin may be a tool to help with search engines or it could be an e-commerce module. This saves you time and money in development costs as you can download the plugins and literally plug them into your website to expand its capability
• CMS platforms are built for search engines to read them, increasing your presence on search engines

If open source is for you, it’s then time to choose a system. WordPress and Joomla are the market leaders however there are some others. We’ve used both WordPress and Joomla. We find WordPress easier to use and is great for blogging. Joomla is more complex but works well for larger websites. You’ll have to do a bit of research to find out more and what’s best for your requirements but it’s well worth it.

With CMS becoming the norm through their reach and affordability, building a website on a CMS platform should be a major consideration when building a new website. For more information or to discuss the options for your new website contact us today.

Tags: cms, wordpress

10 steps to writing a great lead generation marketing email

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the May 14, 2010 @ 8:17 am

Email marketing is nothing new; however when it comes to writing an email to generate leads, despite all the research, businesses still get it wrong. So how do you make sure it’s your email that’s read and not sent to the trash file without even being opened?

Lead generation email marketing is sending an email to a cold list of prospects with the view of monitoring open and click through rates and following up people who have interacted with the email.

Here are 10 steps to getting great results from your email marketing:

1. In general emails that work best look like they have been sent from a colleague, a plain text email that looks like it’s been sent from a colleague is more likely to be opened than one full of images that need downloading
2. Give something away for free – a free guide, paper or eBook. People aren’t interested in you or your organisation now – remember your goals – measuring open and click through rates, not getting enquiries at this stage
3. Target your email well – send different emails to different segments of your data if necessary; better to spend more time now and have higher open rates than blanket send and appeal to no-one
4. Send your email from a real person – business names appearing in inboxes when someone doesn’t know who you are is a big turn off
5. A good subject line – if this doesn’t spark an interest why would anyone open it? Subject lines can be split tested to a number of contacts to find out which results in a higher open rate. The best one can then be used for the remainder of your list. Use words such as ‘find out’ or ‘discover’ or use controversial or inquisitive subject lines
6. Be careful not to use words like ‘free’ or ‘win’ though as these will hit spam filters and bypass your prospect’s inbox completely
7. Start your email with ‘Hi firstname’ – anything too formal and spam filters will pick it up. Also if your contact is previewing their emails this will again make it look like it’s come from a colleague. The same applies to the end of your email – a common sign off such as ‘Kind regards’ is personal and spam filter friendly. Include your name, business, web address and contact details in a plain text signature
8. Put a hyperlink in the first paragraph – this is the point of your email; to get people to click through and find out more about your business. Put as many subsequent links in the text as you can without it looking overloaded and ‘spammy’
9. Keep it as short as it needs to be without diluting the message too much. No-one has time to read pages of text
10. Make sure you have just one call to action – don’t confuse your prospects by inserting links to more than one webpage

And there you have it, 10 steps to writing a good email. If you need any further advice on writing or sending marketing emails then do get in touch with us, we love sharing our knowledge.

Our own marketing success story

This post was last edited by Alex Cohen, on the May 5, 2010 @ 7:17 am

We signed a new client last week. The story of acquiring this client shows how a mix of marketing channels were beneficial to us. We started with an email last September. At the time the prospect opened the email and clicked through to a PURL website. Using email marketing software we knew they had opened the email and clicked through so we used tele-marketing to call them. They were interested in marketing and we booked a meeting with them. We had a meeting last October and at the time the company wasn’t quite ready to start marketing but said stay in touch.

It’s here that it stops for many companies. Phoning up prospects at regular intervals who have shown an interest before can be time consuming and doesn’t always yield results. Here’s where our monthly newsletter came in. By sending this out regularly we are staying in touch with prospects (and customers). The prospect took up an offer in a newsletter, we met again and they agreed to ongoing marketing.

So email marketing, PURLs, tele-marketing, our website and a newsletter won this customer. It is this, and countless other examples why a mix of marketing and consistent marketing is essential.