A common theme I see in marketing is the confusion over marketing features versus marketing the value your product or service is providing. Features are individual aspects of your offering that collectively provide the business value. Of course, they are important to your customers, but quite often they are just how you stack up against your competitors.
People get hung up on individual features, sometimes at the cost of losing sight of the overall picture. Worse yet, if it comes down to feature by feature comparisons, it can quickly turn into a pricing discussion, usually to your detriment.
The key to making any sale is your customer seeing the overall value your product or service provides. Ultimately, the value you are providing to your customer is your vision for solving their business problem. It’s your solution, they want you to solve and they are willing to pay to have it solved. Market the vision and the value. Speak your customer’s language. Focusing on features to the exclusion of the true value you are bringing, is really missing the message. Tell your story about how you are going to solve their problem. Market the value, not the features.
Like this post? Follow ActiveConversion on LinkedIn:
About Jeff Rouse
Jeff Rouse specializes in meshing business needs with innovation, sales/marketing, talent identification and technology. In his spare time Jeff invests in tech startups and fondly recalls a past in which he trounced the world of professional poker.