“Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care."
Theodore Roosevelt
So why include this quote from Theodore Roosevelt? It provides a tremendous insight that many marketers fail to follow.
In the excitement to tell prospects about the latest and greatest product features or about the company’s latest accolades, marketers fail to share why any of this is important. To capture the attention of your prospect, you must first demonstrate to them that you care about their business, their challenges, and their environment.
It’s all about presenting content in a manner that is meaningful and relevant to prospects.
Here are four essential tips to establish and demonstrate meaning and relevance.
#1 – Understanding your prospect’s business environment. There are likely a number of macro issues that affect all companies in your prospect’s industry. Learn what those issues are by reviewing industry publications, attending industry events, and, perhaps most importantly, talking to prospects and learning from them directly. And then speak to or about those issues in your marketing communications.
#2 – Addressing challenges impacting your prospects. These are the proverbial “what keeps your prospect awake at night?” issues. By understanding and addressing these issues, you will have a better chance of capturing the interest and attention of your prospects. Going back to the quote at the start of this article (“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care.”), this is how you demonstrate how much you care. In other words, putting the prospects' needs in front of yours.
#3 – Stating your product/service features as a benefit. It is often relatively simple to list a set of features associated with your product or service. But why make a prospect go through the hard work of “translating” those features into benefits that may be helpful to them. Explain the benefits a prospect will derive if they use your product or service. And it can be very powerful if you align your benefits with the way in which they can address the business challenges we described above.
#4 – Using accolades properly. Many companies have proudly attained external affirmation of their organizational accomplishments. These make take the form of awards, certificates of achievement, attainment of lofty certifications, etc. Make no mistake – these are great but it is important that if you tell prospects about these that they are stated in a way in which it matters to them. By way of example, you need to address these questions: “Why should a prospect care about an award we recently received?” and “How will they directly benefit from this?”
Here’s a way to look at this issue from a non-business perspective. Have you ever attended a social event where you are introduced to a person who spends the entire conversation talking about himself/herself? Don’t you want them to simply stop talking? Contrast that to a person who first asks about you and your life and then shares meaningful and relevant experiences from their life based on what you had to say.
Marketing effectiveness increases when you follow these four suggestions.