Discovering Your Service or Product’s Benefits

Before We Can Write Sales Copy, We have To Understand
Your Service or Product’s Benefits

To identify your product’s benefits, you must consider your customers’ needs.

Imagine yourself in your customers’ shoes, talk to them directly, or conduct surveys asking about their needs and perceptions. If possible, hire an independent firm to conduct a focus group with a sample group of customers to test your product for usability and desirability. If that is not possible go online to pursue D-Y-I customer research. Find your customers in chat rooms or forums and listen to what they are saying. Don’t let your preconceptions color your information gather processes.

Practice your active listening skills.

Give your full attention to what your potential clients are saying. Successful marketers take the time to understand the points being made, and only ask questions as appropriate. If you want to learn, you must practice listening intently and do not interrupt the flow of customer given information.

Examine customers who have purchased your product in the past.

What do their customer profiles tell you about your product’s benefits?

Once you have a basic sense of your product’s benefits, you can set up systems to develop and track their evolution:

• Ask customers for suggestions for improvement.
• Pay careful attention to customer complaints and prospect inquiries. Train and reward employees for questioning customers and prospects to learn what they like and don’t like about your product.
• Watch your competitors. Do the changes in their product offerings suggest product benefits you hadn’t yet considered?

Continuous product and process improvement begins with your passion for excellence and your commitment to deliver value to your customers.