People Don’t Buy Products, They Buy Better Versions of Themselves (2016)
blog.bufferapp.com
blog.bufferapp.com
"They don’t want quarter-inch bits. They want quarter-inch holes."
So after all of this reading, I finally distilled the difference into a sentence that I think makes it easy to distinguish between features and benefits:
A feature is what your product does; a benefit is what the customer can do with your product.
If a feature is what a product does, then isn't making quarter inch holes a feature of drill bits?
I think in one of the two Steve Jobs movies the Pepsi guy explained it quite well: He shows how people open a Pepsi, drink it, and then feel whatever is important to them. What you need to do is actually present your features, but in a way that the customer believes he can achieve his benefits easily with it. Of course to be able to do that, you first need to understand the benefits the customer cares about.
1. present technical features -> be seen as weird nerd.
2. present benefits -> be seen as glitchy sales guy.
3. present features that let customer think about benefits -> sell products.
i.e., manipulate them psychologically to believe that the product is very suitable (when in reality, it may be a piece of shit).
I see this trend and it actually makes me furious. If I want to buy a GPU, I want to see the stats and how it compares to other products, not how many headshots i can make with that particular GPU.
I'll see these ads on billboards, on tv etc and think of the greasy marketing people that want to trick me into buying their stuff.
If the ads are to obnoxious I'll actually make an effort to avoid that brand ( looking at you Apple and Coca-Cola)
make you fat?
(I love pepsi :-) )
It's one of the most annoying things with ad targeting: even if you let them spy on your whole life, it's still so fucking terrible at actually showing relevant ads.
People used to buy CPUs based on how many Mhz they advertised, but Mhz is just a proxy for what you really care about: performance. This resulted in sub-optimal CPUs like the Pentium 4.
At the same time, I don't see why anyone would trust a "headshot" benchmark; that seems too subjective. For gaming, consistently high frame-rates of accurately rendered scenes might be a goal; GFLOPS is just a proxy.
Why else does someone buy a GPU? Given the niche market, the generic consumer positioning may not make as much sense.
First, there is clearly a big difference between marketing to a technical crowd like HN, and marketing to the general public. Also, marketing products that are 99.9% similar will probably be bused on non-technical features exactly because the products are so similar.
Also, I think benefits are more broad and emotional. For example, a lot of auto ads are clearly about how a certain car will, for example, get you laid. Or at least get you an attractive female companion. that's the benefit. Not that it is more reliable, or scores higher in Consumer Reports ratings. The HN crowd is more technical, so puts more value in Consumer Reports ratings, but many people don't actually care. They may think they do, but, when it comes to actually spending money, they don't.
1. nerd feature: 10 Gig MP3 Player (I don't know what was the measure back then or how much a song takes, replace with whatever is a reasonable number)
2. benefit: listen to all your songs everywhere
3. presenting features to entice imagination: 1000 songs in your pocket.
The drill bit by itself does not make holes. You can use it (combined with another tool) to make holes.
A feature is something that the product itself does, not what you can do with the product.
Sure, but I only actually care about those features to the extent they affect my ability to make holes.
I would say yes, and the benefit with the drill would be final product the user is building.
"They don't want quarter-inch holes. They want to build a playset for their kids."
People have said products have three main ways they get marketed.
Specs: These are the physical characteristics. Emotional: You are keeping up appearances and are besting the Joneses. Spiritual: You are realizing your true inner self thru this bespoke vehicle.
The ads tell or remind consumers those products exist, and how good they are for their needs. The ad is a trigger to a pre-existing match. The purchase decision is created by the match.
I don't think people buy better versions of themselves, what they will buy is a product that solves the problem they have and are even more inclined to do so where that product also makes them feel good or improves their social position.
EBF. Emotions, benefits, features. You spark a feeling within someone, whether it's presenting them with the pain they feel or showing them their life a bit better ("my mobile pictures are crap" / "Dave's doggie photos always look on point").
Then you say, well, "this new phone can take awesome photos".
The feature will be "16MP, autofocus etc..." to ground the ethereal feelings to tangibles to make it real for people.
Then BAB. B(efore), A(fter), B(ridge). Frame someone's life before your product, then what their life will be like afterwards, and then the bridge is your product, linking the before and after. "Fed up of blurry, out of focus mobile pictures? Picture this - all of your Instagram lunchtime shots hitting the trending list. Make it happen with the 16MP camera in the Piphoxel."
Of course, if enough startup/tech people are interested in some more tailored lessons, reach out (email in profile). Been thinking of building out a small course/curated info on marketing with this sort of stuff.
I don't get the hate for marketing, over and above UX people who build nice interfaces that get you to do something since it's easy and enjoyable, or developers who create systems that get you to undertake entirely new habits.
Marketing is perhaps seen as the most disposable part of building a business ("if we just build an awesome product, everyone will just talk about it freely!!1!!1"), but I don't understand why it and the frameworks it relies on are looked down on compared to every other element of creating something that's designed to add-and-take value.
"Marketing is evil" worldview aside, the idea that manipulating human behavior can be reduced to a three-letter acronym, and that it can be so formulaic and still be so effective is I think what people find off-putting.
And yet marketing, because it's perceived as being detached from the product (which it really isn't) is the bad actor because it's explicit and transparent about its goal. Amuses me as much as it frustrates.
The tools you've described in your post are unambiguously manipulative (sparking emotions, associating mental states with a product independently of its qualities etc.). Based on this I'm wondering whether there are any marketing frameworks that don't directly rely on one aspect of human psychological weakness instead of simply telling a customer what the product does. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong in this regard.
Of course, it's hard to blame advertisers for doing this, because the incentives are there. It works tremendously well, and I am deeply vulnerable to it myself. Despite this, I can't help but feel distress that the working life of so many smart people is dedicated to inserting needs in other's minds. The acronyms are the cherry on top: the manipulation is so routine that it is parceled with buzzwords, as the other poster noticed.
On a more global scale, it highlights a deeper problem. The practices of advertising today are already lightly dystopian if contrasted with people's expectations of the world a few decades past: massive data-gathering, extremely advanced and detailed A/B testing and optimization, devices providing identification info at all times and in all places, psychological experiments such as those tested by Facebook... etc. Based on these developments and on the precedent of technology often being applied in a deeply unethical way, it's no longer impossible to imagine that it will get worse, possibly even unimaginably worse. Heck, if there were a way for people to insert ads directly into a person's mind should the opportunity I have no doubt that it would become an acceptable practice after a while. We already have people reduced to selling their plasma. Of course, this is all very speculative and it maybe won't work out this way, but I'm not holding my breath.
I do agree that marketing is not the only culprit here, just the one most likely to evoke an epidermic reaction.
You're right that most marketing relies on human psychology, but I wouldn't call it weakness per se, it's the same areas that are influenced by all kinds of storytelling (whether that's film, fiction or marcomms).
Diving deeper, there's also a lot of "marketing" in nature, we look at the evolution of plants and animals whereby entire species have developed based on generating emotions and actions in other animals. Perhaps a tenuous connection :) but I always find it holds valid for me, we're designed to look for emotional triggers to influence what we do. Whether utilising these is "taking advantage" or not is where that personal interpretation comes in.
I'd also point out that advertising is a subset of marketing, but not all of it, it's probably the area that's most explicit in its intentions though, but things like content marketing are designed to influence you as much, whilst being more subversive about it.
I don't hate marketing per se but, nowadays, I am frequently left with an uncomfortable internal voice after making a purchase that asks "Is this really the choice that I wanted/needed or is it just that the I let the company with the best marketing manipulate me into buying this particular choice?"
It was the heyday of p2p filesharing music piracy (as in people were not just doing it, they were ecstatic about it), with a whole generation of non-techy people suddenly turning into part time nerds just for all the abundant music. While all the other devices were engineered for the few songs one might own, the iPod was specces for the flood of music coming from filesharing (iTMS came much later).
This is not too say I don't want to see these studies. Just still skeptical.
The idea is that customers don't purchase products, they hire products to do a job for them.
This is a good description and the first and only time I'll recommend a corporate free ebook: https://www.intercom.com/books/jobs-to-be-done
You can claim that your "comprehensive fractional imperial unit helical matter extraction system" will turn me into a sexy master craftsman all you want, but as much as that's a better version of myself, it still doesn't tell me how you're going to help me drill that quarter-inch hole.
The most obvious example of this extreme is those drug ads with exuberant actors smiling in ecstasy and jumping in slow motion to an idyllic summertime setting. No, I'm not asking my doctor about Xymbaltrix™, and I probably don't want it in my search history either. Similarly, on the tech side, if my project on Platform X is stuck because of factor Y, I want to know what your product or consultants can actually do about it. Don't care if you call yourselves the world's leading Platform X Solutions Provider, spell out your capabilities please. Management, of course, eats up the "better versions of the themselves" talk, but if the goods aren't provided, our necks are on the line for not talking management out of it.
Management, of course, is the purchaser -- "you" aren't.
"this is a stupid ad" means "you" are not the target market.
I find most car ads annoying, yet BMW is still in business. I am not the target market.
There's neurological evidence that when we use tools, we experience them as part of ourselves (or an extension of ourselves). Certainly, driving a car feels like you are driving (not talking about any social identity, the image of your car in the eyes of others, but the biomechanical act of driving itself).
A tool or "hired for a job" can make you feel more capable - that you are more capable. You have changed, you are different. There are situations where a person does change, such as increased physical strength, aerobic fitness, stamina, and increased mental skill and knowledge. But a tool is a shortcut.
For example, when google first came out, when you used it, you were better at search, you were faster, you were clearer in interpreting the results. In the early-adoption stages, perhaps there was also some hipster-like identity, from knowing about this new tool.
I think this is case when you're trying to get new people into your market. Once they're in, they know enough that they do care about the features, but they also care enough to stick around to learn about those features.
It also plays interestingly with the Burning Man ethos. I was expecting an article on lifestyle marketing, which is one of the things the BM ethos is set against: you cannot buy a thing to be a person - but instead the article (to me) points out the sweet spot: Does your product help me be the person I'm trying to be?
The dev-style phrasing is maybe better: Buying products doesn't make me a good developer. Using (good) products clears blockers.
But, is that missing the effect of things that give you new capabilities?
The ticket and the costumes just give you the opportunity. From there it's up to you to step up and create your own transformational experience and explore new ways of being yourself.
The people I meet who do buy costumes are either a) putting on a literal show, like clowns in an audience or b) doing fashion photography out there.
Thing is, you can be the clown or the fashion model without the costume, but you can't be the clown or fashion model without the actions. The costume is a tool to improve that goal.
Yes, they are different: I don't want to hear the later in ads or any product description because I want to know the traits of the products and not how many girls will end up in my bed tonight should I buy it (spoiler: zero). This bullshit is one of the reasons I have to train myself to de-bullshittize surrounding world automatically.
Those things are way expensive than any clothes they are wearing, and require a lifestyle of discipline and long term changes that can take years to get to.
If youre a model in that clothing, you also look just as as good in shorts and a tshirt from target, in act you probably just did an ad campaign with them last week.
Once you figure out investing in your health and your glow as a person is the long term investment, everything else becomes less relevant.
Nonethless, they do want you to believe the clothes are why the model looks so edgy and well tailored but it rarely has anything to do with that.
Take care of your body, take care of your mind. less stuff, and a few high quality investments in minimalist clothing and thats the trick.
People see more value in what a thing can do for them, than what traits it has that might let it do that thing. Often times features get all the press while utility is forgotten.
Side note: People do buy things that make them worse people, though they might not realize it.
Of course, it's a gross simplification to assume it's always the best and only way to communicate about a product (people who already know about the benefits will still want to know about the features), or that all products benefits from that approach (products that are mature are well understood, and talking about their benefits makes you sound like an idiot stating obvious things).
One place where the benefits vs. feature distinction is important is in coming up with new product ideas: if you think in terms of benefits (it gets you X) instead of features (it's like X, except we switched tech-stack-X with tech-stack-Y), it helps you understand why people will buy it and where the value really lies.
I do not agree that people buy things because it makes them better. They buy things because they perceive them as having higher utility (i.e. they satisfy their desires more than the alternatives). Being "better" is only one of many desires.
Any good advertisement appeals to both rational and emotional aspects of your life:
- This car moves you from place A to place B fast (rational)
- This car makes you look cool sexy (emotional)
With this in mind, "1000 songs in your pocket" appeals to the practical, rational side.
It does not make you feel like a better person, it just makes you think "Wow, I can put here everything I ever want to listen." So this part is the mistake in the analysis.
The product design and creative approach - specifically the iPod ads, which positioned the product as a part of a cool & hip look - are what made people feel they'll be way cooler if they owned that device.
Alcohol is all about creating a "better version of yourself" (short-term, while under the influence). And in reality tv and porn you watch better looking / more interesting others (porn, reality tv) to lose yourself.
Food might not need any special tricks because we're pretty wired to interpret images into flavors.
For porn - I was going to say: "...when was the last time porn needed ads? - aren't the ads basically a demo?
Alcohol (AFAIK?) advertises on the "mind-share" effect: when you're going to buy something, which is the thing you've heard of the most?
Reality TV is the interesting one - I wonder, what percent of the advertising screen time is spent on audience reactions?
Everyone knows the reward offered by those things.
It's harder to market a product that makes you believe you can obtain otherwise long term term advantages, like a dress that makes you look thinner or home improvement items.
"Sell the benefits and not the features" is page one/paragraph one of a large proportion of the copywriting and sales manuals out there. This is a good article, but it's also basic advice.
People are also not entirely self-motivated. They may want to improve the condition of their family or a friend -- or to prevent themselves from getting worse than they are already. Loss aversion can be a more powerful motivator than a promise of an uncertain gain. The typical sales pitch for life insurance is to ensure that your family is taken care of, because there is no real benefit to the individual in most cases.
Also, features play a different role in the sales process. Features are much more important when selling to experienced buyers.
This advice to focus on the benefits can be taken too far, as in the case of some people who make things like diet pills in which they bury all the relevant information that a consumer might use to compare the offering to other products. For example you can say that the product burns fat using 'thermogenic' ingredients without mentioning that it's just caffeine. That way you would only be able to sell the diet pills to people who didn't know much about supplements that are supposed to raise your metabolic rate.
People with experience in the market would see through the appeal and scroll right to the ingredients list, see that they could get the same thing for half the price, and bounce. The people who don't know better will overpay for your product and may eventually have complaints when they figure out that they've been duped.
Ideally you should use different appeals for different kinds of prospects at different stages in the buying process. Someone who routinely buys a certain component as part of their job is really only going to care about the features and the price. Making it really easy for that kind of buyer to see that your product beats the competing ones on both features and/or price is going to win his business. Someone who doesn't even know enough about the product to evaluate the features is going to need a benefits-first sales approach. They don't know enough to evaluate the features, so they're not as relevant.
For example, someone who doesn't know the difference between an SSD and an HDD will not understand why a laptop with the SSD acronym in the features makes it a higher performance machine worth a premium price. But if you explain to them that the machine boots in under 10 seconds thanks to the lightning-quick internal solid state drive (SSD) they may understand why it's worth a premium price compared to a laptop with an HDD.
Sales and marketing types give this advice to engineers and other technical people about emphasizing benefits over features because people with technical knowledge are already aware of the benefits and may have a tough time understanding that other people are not similarly aware of the benefits of a given technological solution. But when experts are selling known solutions to experts, making it easy to evaluate features and buy with no fluff added can be a huge benefit in and of itself.
How exactly is someone wearing a headset, and being lulled by BigContent, a "better person"?
(Obviously you have some disdain for big music content producers, but that's not really relevant. Most people don't, and they believed the iPod really did make their lives better, which is the thing that matters from a marketing standpoint.)
Ok, but how is this different from the value-proposition of other music-device vendors?
By rephrasing the technical prose in more human terms, it's more imaginable how an iPod can 'improve' your life - even if you personally disagree with the conclusion.
When marketing to a wide audience, appeals to lifestyle image are often more effective than appeals to reason. That's very much part of why Apple has been so successful.