Lessons to Apply to Marketing

Sell benefits, not products or services. A benefit is the result of our product or service that allows a person to feel the way he needs to feel.  Therefore, people buy when they understand how their buying action will result in gaining the satisfaction of their needs or helping them avoid the loss of presently satisfied needs.  People don't buy products. They buy how they imagine owning the products will make them feel.  In most cases, they have to understand how they will both gain and avoid. 

Motivating people to take some action is the job of the web site designer.  The designer is an activator rather than an initiator of other people's needs.  You motivate by clarifying the visitors'  needs, problems and solutions.

Most sales presentations, offline or online, do little more than tell customers what the products are, and do little more than give a nuts-and-bolts description of the product itself.  The customer is left to his own devices to figure out how the product will help him solve a problem and satisfy a need.  People don't buy products, they buy solutions to their problems.  In common terms, people don't buy power drills because they want the drill;  they simply want the holes that the drill can make.

Offline, in the personal sales presentation, the solution the salesman advocates must grow out of what has been mutually discovered with the customer. It must be addressed to the specific causes, the specific problems, and the specific needs that you and your customer have discovered.  Only then will the customer find real meaning in what our are advocating.  In your web site, however, you will not have this opportunity for the back and forth, "getting warmer" kind of experience.  You will need to address common causes, common problems and common solutions to those problems and discuss normal expected benefits from those solutions.  Over time, you will discover which problems, causes, solutions and benefits are the ones that customers respond to the most.  But all of the processes that occur during the offline sales presentation should be gone through online nonetheless.

Our customers will reach the conclusion that we have the right solution for his problem and need feeling after he is satisfied by our answers to these three questions:

• Will it work?
• Is it the best available?
• Will it be the best in the future?