Best of Marketing Genius: The Five Benefits

The Five Benefits
[first published here, July 2005]

In marketing we are constantly advising our clients to promote the benefits of their product or service, instead of features or functions.

"This new device has 65 Terabytes of bandwidth and a 125 gigahertz processor."

So what!

You have to tell me what that will mean to me.

Anyone attempting to promote or sell anything must drill down with his thinking until he discerns the real benefits.

What's the benefit, then? In this case I can think of two: make more money and have more time to spend with family. The device works faster so you will get work done more quickly, enabling you to shave time off your work day to devote to family. Or, you can do more work in a given time period and (ostensibly) make more money.

A PR consultant from New York City taught me that there are really only five benefits that anyone can mention. According to him, it does not matter what the product is or what industry one inhabits, we have to present our case so effectively that we tell our audience within the first ten seconds which of the five possible benefits we are offering.

There are five, period. F-I-V-E.

Are you ready for them?

Here goes:
1. Make me wealthy
2. Improve my appearance
3. Help me to be more well-liked by my family or friends
4. Make me live longer
5. Get me laid more often

Money, looks, popularity, health and sex. That's it.

Story Pitch 101: Headlines & Deadlines

Recently, my colleague, Skip, and I have been been engaged in some major story pitch -in markets near and far! I'm happy to say we've been rather successful. In fact, we're batting 1,000.

To what do we attribute such success? Well, to be honest there are a lot of factors to our success. First, these pitches have been newsworthy - relevant and compelling. They've been timely. They've tied in with the national news cycle. And, we've called upon our relationships - old and new alike (that's a whole other story for a future post).

But perhaps the most important thing that we've done may surprise you in its simplicity. We've kept the headlines simple and to the point.

You'd be amazed how much a simple, straightforward headline can aid you in your media pitch efforts. It makes sense. Think about it.

First, you don't know every reporter in your market (even if you claim otherwise) let alone those outside it, so the ability to get their attention quickly is of paramount importance. Second, like the agency environment, the media is very deadline driven. So, if the reporter has to figure out the headline or ask 'what's that mean to me and my readers/viewers,' you're wasting their time and yours and you're killing your chances of coverage before they even read the first sentence.

So, keep it simple!