PROMISE OF THE PRODUCT: Emotional + Functional Benefits
The promise of your product or service is the reason your customer chooses to buy from you – it is your commitment to fulfill their desire, whether it’s a feeling of security or empowerment, an elevation of social status or helps to increase their intelligence. It is one of the most important elements of your brand strategy and fully understanding the benefits you offer and how they relate to your product’s features is essential to connecting with your audience.
So, why are functional and emotional benefits so important?
To begin to understand the importance of functional and emotional benefits we need to first understand the concept of the benefit ladder:
Simply put, the higher your communications climb up the benefit ladder the more likely you are to connect with your customer. The reason for this is that when provided with the opportunity we buy feelings not products – we don’t buy basketball shoes because they’re lighter; or even because they help us jump higher; we buy them to fly like our heroes. To feel heroic.
For another example, consider a must-have product: smoke alarms. We don’t buy a high quality smoke alarm because we want to detect smoke particulates in our child’s room via photoelectric, ionization, and heat; we buy a high quality smoke alarm because we want to protect our children (functional) and, in doing so, feel like we’re a good parent (emotional).
Using this logic, we can begin to understand that it’s not the product features themselves that sell products but rather the benefits those products offer. High-speed processing isn’t nearly as appealing as the productivity gained; and that productivity gained isn’t nearly as appealing as the resulting recognition from your peers and superiors. Make sense?
Ok, now what about the benefits themselves?
Search the internet for “reasons people buy” or “product benefits” and you’ll find thousands of articles that attempt to categorize and define the finite functional and emotional benefits you need to be aware of – which is to say, like most everything related to brand strategy there are no right or wrong answers. Only opinions. Find an opinion that aligns with your thinking, run with it and you’ll be on your way. No judgement here.
That said, when we were creating BLUPRNT we had to define a finite collection of functional and emotional benefits to be included in our model: because BLUPRNT uses standardization and algorithms in order to automate an otherwise manual process it requires a defined selection of inputs. We needed to select our own set of benefits and then develop workflows that would lead any business to arrive at their authentic offering(s). So, here’s what we came up with…
The most common question we get at this stage is, “how did you decide on these to be your set?” and the answer is pretty simple: we sought the minimum number of inputs that would yield the maximum amount of authenticity to the largest number of businesses. In other words, we developed a set of benefits that delivers the best bang for your buck.
At first glance, these benefits can seem limiting. But when you start to explore the opportunities of each, you’ll find that the gaps are next to nonexistent – these benefits have you (and your customer) covered. Here’s a breakdown of each benefit…
PROVIDES COMFORT Offering comfort is an emotional sanctuary in a product or service. It's about giving your customers a sense of ease and relief in their hectic lives. When your product is the equivalent of a warm hug after a long day, you're not just selling; you're caring.
OFFERS FREEDOM Freedom is the dream every customer chases. When your product or service breaks the chains of limitation, you're not just offering a commodity; you're handing them the key to liberation in their choices and actions.
GIVES CONTROL Control is a powerful emotional driver. Your product or service that puts the reins back in your customers' hands doesn't just fulfill a need; it empowers them to steer their own course with confidence.
FEEL LIKED Everyone wants to feel liked and accepted. When your product or service makes your customer the life of the party or the favorite in the room, you're not just making a sale; you're boosting their social currency.
FEEL RECOGNIZED Recognition is a human craving. Your product or service that shines a spotlight on your customers, acknowledging their achievements or status, doesn't just satisfy; it celebrates their identity.
FEEL REVERED When your product or service commands respect and admiration, it elevates your customers' experience from the mundane to the extraordinary. You're not just selling a product; you're crafting a legacy.
INSPIRES CONFIDENCE Self-confidence can be your customer's superpower. Your product or service that helps them walk taller and speak louder isn't just a tool; it's a transformation.
FEEL SMART Intelligence is a valued commodity. When your product or service enlightens your customers or gives them that 'aha' moment, you're not just providing a service; you're igniting a spark of brilliance.
INSPIRES OPTIMISM Optimism is the fuel for the future. Your product or service that paints a brighter tomorrow for your customers doesn't just meet a need; it opens a window to new possibilities.
SAVES MONEY Cost-savings can be a powerful functional benefit for your product or service. It tells customers that you can meet the very real budgetary needs of their organization. It may also imply that you offer an efficient product or service experience. Ain’t nothing wrong with that.
OFFERS BETTER VALUE Offering a better value than other products or services can be a strong functional benefit. It implies reliability, efficiency and possibly even cost savings – who doesn’t love “more bang for your buck”?
IMPROVES SOCIAL STATUS While improving one’s social status can be a very emotional desire for customers it can also serve a functional purpose: elevating one’s status within an organization empowers them to have greater influence over decision-making scenarios. Helping your customers climb the ladder of success? Pretty great benefit, right there.
MAKES LIFE SIMPLER Let’s be real - life is complicated enough. There aren’t many of us looking to add more complexity to our lives, so the fact that your product or service promises to not only keep things simple but to actually simplify other aspects of your customer’s life is a great functional benefit. Simple sells, yo.
WORKS BETTER Nothing is worse than a product or service that straight up sucks. As customers we’re often choosing the ‘least worst’ option; so, offering a product or service that promises to work better than the rest is a strong functional benefit. Just be sure to back it up with the goods – if you say it works better it’d better, you know, work better.
PROVIDES SENSORY APPEAL Tastes great. Feels good. Smells amazing. These are all sensory benefits that your product or service may offer (amongst many others). If you’re in the business of putting smiles on faces, offering a pleasant sensory experience is a great functional benefit.
IMPROVES WELLNESS Offering customers improved health and well being is a killer functional benefit. Whether your product or service is about motivating, supplementing or revitalizing you’re in good shape if you’re improving wellness for your customers.
INCREASES INTELLIGENCE Does your product or service teach customers a new skill? Or provide them with new information or insights? If so, you’ve got a valuable functional benefit on your hands – empowering customers to quickly and easily gain intelligence is smart business.
PROVIDES SECURITY Safety is a strong functional benefit – whether your product or service protects a customer or their loved ones (ex. safe driving, health insurance, retirement planning, etc) or provides unmatched assurances (ex. Lifetime guarantee, data protection, etc) you’re eliminating worry, one of the greatest barriers to purchase we experience as customers.
OFFERS SOCIAL CONNECTIVITY Feeling connected is one of the greatest human needs. It can also be a strategic desire: in some scenarios, being looped in to new trends or in close touch with customers can be essential to survival. If your product or service keeps your customers connected to what matters to them, you’re in business.
Ok. Now that we understand the wide versatility of each benefit and how each can apply to nearly anyone’s business, it’s important to address the number one mistake marketers make when thinking about the benefits that your products or services provide to customers: what you think doesn’t matter nearly as much as what your customer thinks. Which is to say, if you think your smoke alarm’s product features offer customers a sense of security and thus feelings of comfort in their role as a parent but they disagree, then it doesn’t matter what you think. In fact, they may even disagree with you about which product feature is most important. Your customer may not care about your advanced particulate detection; instead, they may care more about the color or the battery life and how often they’ll need to roam the house searching for which alarm is chirping at 3am. This prioritization of product features would then inspire a whole new cascading set of desired benefits which may not align with your initial hypothesis.
Thus, it’s important to not only know the features + benefits you believe you offer but also to understand which features + benefits actually matter to your customer. So, how do you figure this out? How do you determine which features and benefits that your product actually offers matter most to your customer?
BLUPRNT is designed to help you nail exactly this exercise –identify what you believe to be the primary functional and emotional benefits of your product (as well as the product features that deliver these benefits); and then, explore the desired benefits of your customer in order to see where you align. We call this Promise of the Product and Customer Desire and together, they’re a key component of your market positioning.
Best of all, with BLUPRNT you can knock out this exercise in less than an hour. And then do it again whenever you release a new product feature or target a new customer profile. It’s that easy. So, what is your promise?