Suppose your product features are much like your competitors'. And the benefits of using your products or services are similar—whether customers use your gizmo or theirs, they're going to arrive at the same place.
Looks like you're on the commodity train. Destination: Irrelevance City, with stops in Price Warburgh and Declining Marginshire.
When ordinary features-and-benefits-based communications fail to distinguish your business from the pack, it may be time to take your messages somewhere else—into the heart of the customer experience.
In education, travel, luxury goods, food service, hospitality, professional services and other industries in which the thing sold is a thing lived, you need to communicate what it feels like to see, hear, touch, or taste your product.
The following points form a rough road map that can take your business from a place that's obscure in your prospects' minds to one that is tangible, vivid, and highly desirable.
Who: Personalize the experience
When value is locked in the experience—whether a dynamic classroom, an invigorating executive retreat, or an indulgent spa—objective "facts" fail to capture the subjective essence of your product. For that, you need a personal perspective, and none is better than that of your customers themselves.
Direct quotes, testimonials, day-in-the-life narratives, and even brief biographies can introduce the sympathetic element that allows prospects to project themselves into the experience you provide.
Insider secret: First-person ("I" or "we") isn't necessarily the only or even the best way to go. I recently created a set of student profiles for a famous graduate business program. Instead of first-person testimonials, I interviewed the students and created third-person ("he," "she," or "they") profiles. Doing so allowed me to dig up and present important background facts—military experience, entrepreneurial successes, previous economic handicaps—that students would have neglected to mention, or would have found awkward to discuss without sounding immodest. By using the third-person approach, I was able to shape a compelling narrative for each student while incorporating direct quotes that created immediacy.
What: Illustrate the experience
Seeing is believing—even in language. The more graphic you are, the easier it is for readers to immerse themselves in your copy and imagine themselves within it. When selling an experience, a bare-bones list of bullets won't do; you want to create copy so rich that it envelops the reader's senses.
Insider secret: Don't rely on adjectives to carry the weight of your descriptions. Instead, reach for unexpected images that illuminate the uniqueness of your experience. Take the famous Royal Riviera Pears, for example. The people at Harry & David could have said that their pears are sweet and juicy—nothing special about that. But, instead, they said the pears are "so big and juicy, you have to eat them with a spoon"—and launched a direct marketing empire that thrives to this day.
How: Demonstrate the experience
It's not enough to promise a special kind of experience, you have to prove your ability to deliver it. Why should the customer simply believe that you're capable of fulfilling your promises? This is an opportunity to align your features into a larger story: how you do what you do.
For example, if your luxury cruises trumpet excellent cuisine, create a profile—or even a video—of your award-winning chef in action. Do you run an innovative alternative medicine center? Perhaps your Web site can feature articles about the benefits of various herbal therapies. Are you in a professional services business (such as law or consulting)? Give away whitepapers that articulate your methodology and why it works.
Insider secret: If your expertise is a crucial part of the customer's experience, create materials that serve as physical representations of your intelligence. Don't focus on your business or even your service; instead, develop content, such as downloadable mini-books packed with insights and suggestions that prospects will find immediately useful. By doing so, you build credibility that leads to trust—the necessary first step toward building a relationship that will lead to real business.
Where: Make your Web site part of the experience
It's only partially correct to assume that visitors come to your site to learn more about you. It's much more reasonable to assume that their experience of your site forms an impression—favorable or not—of what it's like to buy your product or service, or to work with your organization.
Does your site welcome visitors with tools, resources, information, or advice that help them achieve their goals or fulfill their wishes? Or does it merely bombard them with aggressive sales pitches and obsessive self-promotion? Is it organized for easy, rapid navigation? Or is it a frustrating tangle of ambiguous links and complicated forms?
In short, on the Web you're not who you say are, but what the visitor experiences—or suffers through—on your site.
Insider secret: Think of your site as a place and yourself as a host. As a good host, you welcome your guests and take pains to demonstrate hospitality. Likewise, the copy on your pages should acknowledge who your visitors are—such as "savvy travelers looking for eco-friendly adventures off the beaten path" or "sales managers who need to move the needle, fast"—and invite them to resources they're likely to appreciate, such as photo galleries of exotic destinations or downloadable sales training worksheets.
