The Desired Effect: Why Outcomes Matter More Than Features and Benefits
Bob Stockwell
Marketing Consultant
The Desired Effect: Why Outcomes Matter More Than Features and Benefits
When you buy a product or service, you typically have a specific goal in mind, an outcome you want to realize. You schedule that furnace tune-up in October so that when January’s low temps come around your family gets to be cozy in your home. You buy that huge roasting pan because it’s your turn to host the family for Christmas dinner and a 20-pound turkey just doesn’t work on a cookie sheet. But until you have an outcome in mind, the features of a product or service just aren’t relevant. If it’s May, you probably don’t need to have your furnace operating at peak performance.
Your customers and prospects evaluate your solutions the same way. If you’re messaging isn’t based on the outcomes they want to achieve, you’ll have a hard time catching their attention. Features and Benefits come in to play once your prospects see that your solution matches their required outcome.
“So how,” you may ask, “do I flip my thinking to outcome-based marketing?” Start by creating a persona for your target customer—let’s call her Donna—and then put yourself in her seat. What is it that Donna wants to get done – what’s the desired effect?
Make a list of three to five possible results that Donna might have in mind as she starts looking for your solution, and then start building your messaging plan for each of those outcomes using your features and benefits to support the ultimate goal. We’ll use the furnace tune up example.
It’s mid-October, and the first chilly night comes suddenly. Donna flips the thermostat in her home from COOL to HEAT, and the furnace kicks on. OOF! What is that smell?!? Donna wonders when the filters were last changed, and quickly realizes she’s not even sure where the filter is or what size she needs. But that STENCH! Donna wants that smell gone, and she wants to know that the furnace will run well through the winter.
The desired outcome: comfort and security. With this in mind, you can now build a targeted message for the Donna’s in your target market and have a reasonable expectation that your outreach will resonate, increasing your pipeline and creating new business opportunities. You also get the opportunity to address an outcome Donna may not yet realize – that she wants a resource she can readily call to help her keep her home comfortable. She wants a relationship she can rely on. Make sure to create the right leave-behinds and engagement tools to help Donna feel confident that she made the right choice and knows you’ve got her back anytime.
At Targa Media, we excel at creating outcome-drive and persona-focused marketing strategies and campaigns. To do this, we consider five consumer types to discover true outcomes—Logical, Practical, Social, Innovative, and Nurturing. (Link to TraitMatch Campaign) Depending the type of consumer you are targeting, your messaging will need to match up to their traits in order to be authentic. Messaging that tries to target more than one type of consumer all at once becomes bland and overgeneralized, and fails to resonate with anyone as authentic. Moreover, the “desired effect” from the same product is quite different for different consumer types, even though the “features and benefits” are essentially neutral.
Let’s start a conversation on the outcomes you would like to achieve!
Jason’s Take
Marketers, take note of some key points from Bob’s article. In the final paragraphs Bob refers to “reasonable expectations” and “resonating messages.” As marketers I feel we have a lot of control over the authenticity of our product and message. I think we become less authentic when we try to manipulate our customers’ emotions. Instead, we would do well to meet out customers where they are. Our inclinations to “dress up the pitch” might seem genuine to us (after all, we’re in the business of dressing things up,) but as the customer takes the podium as the definitive diva who’s “always right” our roles need to shift toward “polishing the product” for our consumer’s desired outcome. Bob alludes to our fundamental responsibility (and, I might add, our self interest) to be genuine and transparent. The more messaging layers a customer has to peel through, the more trust you’ll lose among your target audience.