No one cares about your amazing product features
Does this sound familiar?
The latest release of your product/service has some really cool bells and whistles in it and you’re excited. You can’t wait to share it with all the people and impress them with the brilliance of these enhancements. Marketing knows all the details and all you have to do is wait for the press release and blog posts and videos and content galore to come out extolling the magnificence of what you’ve done. Then you’ll definitely see a bump in sales. Because brilliance!
Fast forward to when all that new release information is published: The phones aren’t ringing more, your inbox isn’t overflowing with inquiries, the leads aren’t pouring in, and the email to customers with the release notes has a 15% open rate, assuming you’ve tracked it. (You did track it, didn’t you?)
Doesn’t anyone care about all this effort you’ve made to help them?
Well…the harsh truth is they don’t. And it’s probably because you made it about you and not them.
Think about the products you buy, especially the ones that delight you most. Did you buy any of them merely because you read through the features and the product checked all your boxes? I doubt it.
More likely, as someone looking for a tool to help you, you made the buying decision because it solved (or you hoped it would solve) a problem for you and then it ended up delivering on expectations you didn’t know you had, causing delight. You got something unexpected out of it. And you probably chose that product because the company explained what was in it for you.
The importance of why and how it contributes to a story
As a marketer, I want to tell a story. I don’t want to describe technical features that put me to sleep without knowing why they matter to the person consuming content. And if I have intimate knowledge of the business and still can’t see why the feature matters, I guarantee customers and prospects will struggle, too. This will become obvious when you see data on traffic to your various announcements.
Crafting a story means I want to know the background of why this feature was developed and why it was considered important for this release. Explain to me what connection it has to other features being released and how they work together to create better or new outcomes for users. Give me a sense of what’s important about this feature right now versus three months ago or a year from now.
The why matters and it’s foundational to telling the story in a way people can relate to and care about.
Describe the pain and the stakes at play
Building and maintaining a relationship with prospects and customers requires empathy and trust. They need to see you understand their problems. This can play into the why of building a feature and it should be part of the story. Seeing the challenges caused by a problem is the first clue to a potential customer that they’re looking in the right place for a possible solution.
What if they don’t want to take action now? Going a step further and showing what’s at stake when the problem persists gives them some context and creates urgency around making a decision. It can have the side benefit of positioning you as both a true expert and a partner that is well-positioned to help them when the message is authentic and not overblown.
Show that you truly understand the problem and care about solving it as a basis for building trust in your solution.
Features are nothing more than facts; your customers want outcomes
The most important question your audience needs answered is, “What’s in it for me?”
This gets down to the root of how your product meets their expectations and benefits them. If your product solves a problem, that’s a baseline expectation and probably the reason they’re checking you out in the first place. Build on that and share the “but wait, there’s more” description of the unexpected benefits.
When you’re solving a problem they didn’t know they had or didn’t expect you to solve, that’s where you can start to (potentially) differentiate your solution from the competition and build a relationship that leads to a long-term delighted customer.
We all want to know what we’re getting out of something we invest in, so prioritize benefits over features.
What’s the scoop about your fab new features?
Most people want to know what’s in it for them and that’s the real story. The features themselves are mere facts that matter to some, but not most. If you want people to care about the enhancements you’ve made to your product, you have to give them a reason. And that starts with how they’ll benefit every. single. time.