Tell me what your company does
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Tell me what your company does
1–10 of 195 posts
Re: Tell me what your company does
#2Yep, this is the end-game of "customers buy benefits, not features" marketing writing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm fully on board with the idea of marketing your benefits, not features, but so very much of the marketing writing you see out there now takes the concept to this unhelpful extreme.
I ride my bike past a shop every few days that's called something like "Shelter Solutions," but in smaller print they say "We rent equipment for commercial and residential roofing need". Boom, done, that's what I care about.
Or some lady who gave me a fistful of business cards at a networking event (she apparently has five thriving gigs, eyeroll), one of which was "telecommunications solutions consultant"--talking to her, she has some cell phone MLM program she's a part of.
Customers buy benefits, but if you're not telling them what the features are, you've failed at writing clear copy. Most people do.
Re: Tell me what your company does
#3[deleted]
Re: Tell me what your company does
#4I suspect this happens when companies forget what they do!
Re: Tell me what your company does
#5I've been trying for several years to determine the company size at which we will be forced to turn our understandable site into marketing buzzwords and incomprehensible sentences. 50 people? $5 million/year in revenue? What is the turning point and who drops by to force us into incomprehensibility?
Re: Tell me what your company does
#6I've thought it was because they needed to fill up a large blank area with copy (words), otherwise the page will look weird.
It might be because the adage, "don't sell a product, sell an emotion," but taken to an inconceivable level.
Or maybe it's like legalese, it's not necessary, but looks good if you are billing at $500 an hour.
Re: Tell me what your company does
#7The bait-sunk-cost approach = get em talking however you need to (including them asking what the hell you actually do) to tell you what they want and sell your solution as a possibility or the best approach.
I hate this transparent attempt to trick (me) the customer. IBM has done this to me when I'm drilling down into technical requirements like I'm some middle manager who doesn't know the actual needs. I always suspected that IBMs bread and butter is to move the sunk cost of contact into an actual sunk cost of technical debt, but I have firsthand experience now. The sign of a bad culture and lazy marketing.
Re: Tell me what your company does
#8One-liners are hard.
One problem is people trying to pack ALL the features and ideas into that summary. So in the pursuit of wanting everyone to get the entire vision, the "what you offer right now" is lost.
As a company's product offerings expand into many, this gets even harder.
Re: Tell me what your company does
#9This is some Silicon-Valley-the-HBO-show-grade stuff. I wonder whether the people designing these website still think they're being hip or they just have to cater to some blissfully unaware managers.
Re: Tell me what your company does
#10Yep, this is the end-game of "customers buy benefits, not features" marketing writing. Don't get me wrong, I'm fully on board with the idea of marketing your benefits, not features, but so very much of the marketing writing you see out there now takes the concept to this unhelpful extreme. I ride my bike past a shop every few days that's called something like "Shelter Solutions," but in smaller print they say "We ren…
I sometimes feel like I'm an alien on this planet. I can't imagine how "customers buy benefits, not features" could possibly work.
What I mean is this - I'm not going to buy a product that I don't understand, period. Be it a piece of software (from kitten photo apps to CAD software) or an appliance, I only buy (and ever imagine buying) things for which I at least clearly understand what inputs and outputs are. I can use this software to upload JPGs to friends. I put dirty dishes in this appliance, add some consumables, and clean dishes pop out. Those are "features", not "benefits".
On the other hand, when I see people selling on "benefits", I immediately assume they're dishonest and steer away. The listed benefits usually are, at best, a serious abuse of some cherry-picked words, and at worst outright lies. It's one of the strongest negative signals for me when evaluating companies (especially when I don't have third-party information on their actual products).
Do most people really live their lives looking for something to buy that will make their lives "connected", or their company "full of streamlined cloud synergy" or something?