Your Product Is Not What You Think It Is

[Peter (IMC)]

In most cases your products are not what they are to you. At least not to your customers. As difficult as it may seem to imagine, your customers look at your product totally different than you do.

You sell paint, your customer buys a new look for his room.
You sell car parts, your customer buys a repaired, improved perfomance or a better looking car.
You sell jewelry, your customer buys a happy wife or girlfriend.

Do you focus on the greatness of your product, or the needs of your customers? The easiest mistake to make is thinking that your product sells it self.

Is your site a catalog or a real online store? How do you present your products? And most importantly, do you know what your customers are really buying?

Investigating the needs of your customers and focusing on it can give you a sales boost beyond your dreams. Give your customers the feeling they´re understood and not only will they be more interested to buy from you, they may even be promoting your store to their friends.

What do you do to understand the needs of your customers?

[markp1980]

Interesting, I guess when you sell a product you think that it will sell itself.

An outsider view of my site / product would be really appreciated.

www.rosesbydesign.co.uk

Do you think we sell it as it should be?

[begabloomers]

Thanks Peter that is a timely reminder to review a site from someone else's perspective.

Testimonials are good but an image also says a lot. So I guess, in answer to Peter, the concept sounds good but the site looks a bit like a catalogue and a little impersonal ( as does mine! ).

I guess that's where an image showing the desired end reult is approriate? e.g. happy mother, or wife etc. etc. receiving the gift - happy because someone has taken the time to personalise the gift.

[Dcrux]

Nope. Nothing wrong. And do you know how I know that? Because there are about twenty thousand sites doing the same thing.

Let's start taking this "outside perspective" thing seriously.

A woman starts a giftbasket service. It does about what you would expect with twenty thousand direct and indirect competitors -- poorly.

So this woman rethought the basic assumptions underlying the product. She redesigned her business and got free TV converage, newspaper coverage, and tremendous word of mouth.

She sells anonymous giftbaskets for employees and relatives to send coworkers a message about breath problems, odor problems, and so on. So one might be mouth wash, floss and chewing gum.

Another woman had gotten tired of throwing out the wilted product from her flower business. She repackaged them as "breakup bouquets," put in boxes of melted chocolates, and made a fortune. Another woman redesigns wedding bands for divorcees into pieces celebrating their new life.

These are just a couple of ideas about people who actually stepped out of the mental straitjacket of their preconceptions about the products they were selling. Each of these have a "that just isn't done" factor. Make a list of all the "if you had been in this business as long as I have..." things. Find out all the "impossibles" which can't be done, but would absolutely crush the competition -- then do it.

If you're working outside the competition's comfort zone, they aren't competitors.

[Feydakin]

Peter hits it right on, again..

In the jewelry business we do not sell gold, platinum, diamonds, or gemstones.. We sell emotion.. We sell that feeling that someone will have when they give, receive, or just look at some special piece of jewelry.. It's one of the few industries I've worked in that actually understands this and works that emotion for everything it's worth..

Anyone can sell price.. In any industry.. But it takes a targetted message to sell an emotion..

[begabloomers]

D'Crux,

yes Peter already has a product that is 'out of the box'. Good on him!

The point i was inarticulately trying to make, is that the moment I go to his front page, within seconds the novelty/uniquness wears off and it looks like any other flower catalogue site ( to me at least ). I began wondering if the service was available in tulips ( my favorite flowers ) etc. that is, he had lost his unique selling point message fairly quickly with me ( and my consumers eyes) and I started looking at it as if it was any florist's home page.

Maybe I have a shorter attention span than the average shopper.

[markp1980]

Thanks for the feedback...

This thread certainly gets us all thinking.

Does anyone have any suggestions for improvements?

Many Thanks

Mark

[Dcrux]

Does anyone have any suggestions for improvements?

Exactly why I wrote that post. And why you won't be following it. Enjoy the comfort zone.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by markp1980

Interesting, I guess when you sell a product you think that it will sell itself.

An outsider view of my site / product would be really appreciated.

www.rosesbydesign.co.uk

Do you think we sell it as it should be?

Your home page text:

Want to send flowers ? RosesbyDesign.co.uk is the No.1 alternative online florist for flower delivery with the perfect flowers to send - whatever the occasion. Send personalised roses with your own message or image printed onto the petals to express your feelings, send roses to say thank you, or send roses to let somebody know that you are thinking of them.

You start right away with saying how great your company is,... no need to do that.

Go for what they really want right away, to surprise somebody, and then you can tell about the unique added value you give. But keep emphasizing the "making somebody happy" part. Keep letting this focus come back in all your product pages as well.

If you´re not a great writer, ask for help. This is not difficult but you need the right touch in order to get this done right.

Then you really need to create a whole bunch of pages that don't sell. The testimonials suggested before are a good way, but make sure they´re always accompanied with a picture of the person that received the rose. You can even give an insentive, like send us a photo and your next order is at half price. Maybe that costs you a bit of money, but the value of these photo testimonials is much greater than they cost. Do make sure that the photos are of the person with the rose,.. and not just the rose. You need happy people in there because that´s what your clients are buying,... happiness!

Don't worry about being one of the "20.000+ sites doing the same thing" Your job is 2 fold:

1) Getting visitors
2) Selling online

Getting visitors is irrelevant if you don't sell right. In the end a 5% conversion rate on 100 visitors is a lot better than a 0.5% conversion rate of 500 visitors. And what´s even better,... once you have the selling online done right, the number of visitors to your site will grow naturally, without you having to do anything complicated like link building.

A successful website is promoted mostly by its visitors!

[markp1980]

Thank you very much peter.

The text on our homepage currently is more for seo 'keywords'.

I will come up with an alternative including the 'make someone happy' 'surprise' etc

Will see how it converts.

:-)

Mark

[Peter (IMC)]

The text on our homepage currently is more for seo 'keywords'.

Copy written for a site can be optimized without it becomming "more for seo 'keywords'" In fact that´s not difficult at all. Just often it feels like pleasing a search engine is like pleasing a machine while pleasing a site visitor is everything but pleasing a machine. However, the machine in this case is programmed to behave like a site visitor and can thus be pleased in the same way... :)

Sounds complicated, but the real problem is not writing for the search engines, but writing in general. Being able to write really well is a gift!

[TrafficProducer]

Great Insight

The advertising term comes to mind:-

"Don’t sell the sausage, sell the sizzle,”

...
What does the local shop sell? Newspapers, Milk, sweets…

Yes but they mainly sell convenience. Not having to travel far, etc.

[Mistress Jane]

This was a subject which caught our eyes.

How do you get around it ?

We are the owners of a Gothic Dungeon ... yes ... it's a business too ... if you are narrow minded ... best leave this post alone, and read the next

Been in business for over 5 years with a local, national and international clientele. About a year ago, we opted for the 'puppy dog principle' . You know ... kid asks dad for a puppy .. shop owner says ... "Keep the puppy for the weekend ... and if you don't want it , bring it back !" Yes ... right ?

On our website, we offered potential clients an insight into how we would match their interests to a private sesion with a Mistress or Master. No obligation... it is free , then a follow-up procedure.

We were inundated with requests from all over the world .. most of whom lived more than a 1,000 miles from us. But we whetted their appetites for the real thing. Our ROI is about 25%, with a library of sessions, plus photos to match pretty well all interests.

Moral of the story ... give the potential customer a taste of what they get ... free downloads, free solution to a pressing problem (especially about computers) ... in fact give them a taste of what they are going to get.

Fond regards from sunny Spain
Iron Damsel, Mistress Stiletto and Highlander

"When the going gets tough, the tough beg for mercy"

[thorfjalar]

As I understand it, what this thread is saying to a newbie like me is:
The most obvious subject for a beginners site is to cover someting s/he is already interested in. The problem being that most likely there already exist numerous websites already that cover the subject. The solution, according to this thread, is to find a unique perspective or new way of presentation.

[tomfoolery]

Or - another old Marketing/Copywriting saying: (from a customer's perspective: "Don't tell me about your grass seed, tell me about my beautiful lawn"

I can't tell you how many of my clients have come to me with copy that pushes Features. Even in this day and age. Or with copy that is all "I We I We" instead of "You You You".

Also -

A great book for understanding how to uncover customer needs is Spin Selling, by Neil Rackham. It's sold by a company called Huthwaite (and also available on Amazon). I read it years ago, and still find it to be the best book on the subject:

http://www.spinselling.com.au

Richard

[thorfjalar]

Like:

Don´t tell me about your airline tickets, tell me about my destination?

Don´t tell me about number of pages in a book, tell me how much smarter it will make me?

[dynamics]

Need some help but not allowed to send a private message??!

I'm a member - why am I 'not authorised'?

[dynamics]

This site has lots of broken cookies. The service I'm trying to promote is a fix for broken cookies.

This 'Not Authorized' is typical

Gawd

Brad

[TrafficProducer]

Moral of the story ... give the potential customer a taste of what they get ... free downloads, free solution to a pressing problem (especially about computers) ... in fact give them a taste of what they are going to get.

This is a good point :)

Although I know of some site which list business details for free, not a URL link though... if you want a URL link get out £300+ ,(UK Pounds), cash a year.

One problem with this is that users can not get a true idea of how much Traffic they will get because no link is given for the free listing.

[dynamics]

This is nuts. I got sent here from your webpro mailout, I thought 'yep - sounds like what I need'. Now what?

I can't contact the guy who seems to have the suss on what I want.

[pomeroi]

Is it only me or are there others that find too much text on a page off putting?.
I'm pretty new to all this but wanted a website that looked more 'visually appealing' and a lot more 'user friendly'. I want a site that will do as many things as you would expect if you were actually in our high street shop.
But is this the right thing to do?, will I still receive traffic through to the site by doing it my way.

This site is 70% complete, as there are other sections that are being completed.
Please let me know your thoughts

http://www.pomeroi.co.uk

Andrew

[Dcrux]

Please let me know your thoughts

Pretty standard stuff. But I'm not the only one sensing a certain preponderance of one single theme: Monkey See Monkey Do.

Again similarity isn't a marketing strategy -- it's camouflage.

Buyarock.com looked at what other sites were doing and then did something different. Horrible ...especially if you hate endorsements from Vogue magazine and free publicity driving people to the site.

Some 70 years ago, Coca-Cola gave its designer a special brief: Design a bottle that no matter how smashed could always be recognized among all the thousands of glass shards on the street. Obviously, the incisive designer fulfilled the brief successfully, and today we can still recognize the distinctive Coke bottle.

Imagine that we performed the same test on your Web site. Imagine we smashed it by searching through every page and deleting the brand and any references to it -- and then asked the consumer to visit the site without knowing what its brand was. Do you think your site would pass the Coke test? In most cases, I doubt it. But isn't this what true branding is? Integrated, consistent elements that, even in isolation, are signifiers of a brand but together create the full brand identity?

--Smash Your Web Site

If a user is going to see your site and seven others in a surfing trip ....what's going to make them stop at yours? The answer in most cases is not one thing.

And a lot of futile hope is going into those logos. A logo is not a business identity, nor is it a brand.

I believe that the logo is the most abused, misapplied, misconceived, wrongfully distracting element of design and business today. I encounter too many people in business who believe that their logo should define them. The reality is that they should define their logo. For some reason it seems that this business fundamental is lost on most business owners.
-- Logo Misapplication

Me-too websites are not going to get the surfer to stop. Lookalike content and industry standard policy "because that's the way it's done" doesn't matter when the objective is differentiation. Agonizing over a color scheme and logo because nothing else on the site sticks out is a waste of time. Take some of the money, time and effort spent rigging page rank -- and spend it on trying to qualify for a high rank. Too many site owners are concerned about being invisible to Google when they're really invisible to the visitors who get to the site.

Most sites have no purpose and nothing worth saying. Simply "to have a site because everyone else does" and "wanting to learn to build a site" are not purposes -- they're excuses.

long copy outperformed short copy by 40.54%. Click-through traffic sent to the short copy page was unprofitable (-14% ROI), while traffic sent to the long copy page produced an ROI of 21%.

...Again, long copy outperformed short copy, this time by an even greater factor of nearly four to one. Our ROI was a dismal -66% for the short copy page and a very respectable 50% for the long copy page.
-- Long Copy vs. Short Copy Tested

Is long copy "off putting." The surprising answer they don't mention in the test listed above is Yes. When you have nothing to say, no amount of copy can ever be short enough to mask the writer's disinterest.

[Gareth Eckley]

I agree with the original post very much. I have recently re-designed my site to try to focus on what the buyer wants and feels with a color scheme and look to appeal to my visitor profile. My main navigation bar is all about the experience of ordering what is a very unique gift.

I am lucky in one sense in that what I offer, portraits carved in gemstone, is a very emotional gift. When someone sees a portrait of a loved one the response is immediate and very strong.

If you have succeeded in capturing the spirit of the person they will love it and be deeply moved.

However get it wrong and they will hate the portrait. There is no middle ground.

You can see my site at www.portraitsinstone.com.

One dilema in having a niche product is how to promote and get the right people to find you. I am struggling with this right now. Do i promote as a Jeweller or a portrait artist or a cameo carver ?

I do not fit with what people using those searches are looking for. Most searches for cameos are for shell or antique victorian style, portrait searches are usually for paintings and so on.

My strategy at present is to pack lots of resources and content on the main site and use my blog to write articles that cover all those interests and hope that over time links and site visits will increase.

[nipplecharms1]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Sounds complicated, but the real problem is not writing for the search engines, but writing in general. Being able to write really well is a gift!

Peter, although I can agree with most of what you said here, and your insights are painfully obvious once you state them, there is something here a bit amiss.

It’s more the chicken or the egg quandary, or my favorite of all time baseball/father-son movies “Fields of Dreams.” “Build it and they will come!”

Quickly to my point buckaroos…. Just because you have a well designed and written site, if no one knows its there, did the fallen tree really make a sound? Now there is some mixing of metaphors. People need to know you are there. How do they do that?... Search engines… how does Goizzile know you are there, you have to write your page for the “spider” etc etc etc.

Chicken or the Egg? Build it and will they really come? Balancing the two is the trick and knowing how to work the system will make you rich. Hell I just want to be well-off! :)

And yes, being able to write IS A gift. I was not given that gift. Anyone want to help me at www.nipple-charms.com? It’s more than appreciated. (Self-promotion is ok right?)

Dcrux. Great points also. I enjoy your insights also.

All my best,

Michael

[Dcrux]

Build it and they will come is one of the most misapplied terms in recent memory.

Build It and They Will Come - A Marketing Strategy?

"Build It and They Will Come"... or Maybe Not!

Promotion it usually not the step most people forget. Having something worth promoting is.

[nipplecharms1]

Originally Posted by Dcrux

Promotion it usually not the step most people forget. Having something worth promoting is.

Well said. I just hope what I have is worth promoting! :)

Thanks Dcrux!

Michael

[Peter (IMC)]

Quickly to my point buckaroos…. Just because you have a well designed and written site, if no one knows its there, did the fallen tree really make a sound? Now there is some mixing of metaphors. People need to know you are there. How do they do that?... Search engines… how does Goizzile know you are there, you have to write your page for the “spider” etc etc etc.

"Goizzile" knows about you because of links to your website, not because of how your pages are written. What you do on your website helps the search engine to understand your pages, but is in no way related to "knowing about" your website.

There is a "chicken and the egg" issue of course. But once you got either a chicken or an egg, you´re in business. If you got the chicken, feed it and put it to work, if you got the egg, sit on it and keep it warm,. :)

This thread is mostly focused on getting the visitors to do what you want them to do. We´re discussing what´s needed to get as many visitors to do what you want them to do.

So we´re discussing sites that already have visitors, not new sites that are starting from scratch.

[nipplecharms1]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

This thread is mostly focused on getting the visitors to do what you want them to do. We´re discussing what´s needed to get as many visitors to do what you want them to do.

So we´re discussing sites that already have visitors, not new sites that are starting from scratch.

Point laid is a point played. Focus Michael.

Thanks Peter. I have been back looking at my site and admit it sucks. It sells but it can sell better. Me thinks me has taken it as far as me can take it!

Great thread. I thank you.

Michael

[debase23]

Although I believe that a significant amount of societal ills are rooted in advertising, I myself am a manipulator of emotions as a designer. I do draw the line at actual spin doctoring, or at least I think I do.

I mention this because writing copy and designing the customer experience(s) of a brand/product can involve ethical decisions that you must make with or for your client. Sometimes the customers are hip to Chris Ware and Onion type satire, other times it can be a danger. The first example that comes to mind is a letter to the editor of Reader's Digest, about the dire threat to Christianity from JK Rowling, and quoting an Onion article about little kids flocking to witchcraft while dressed as Harry Potter. The letter writer completely missed the joke, and fortunately the RD editor let him/her down nicely instead of jumping on the bandwagon.

[debase23]

What I mean is, don't lie about your product. Unless it's really clever and obvious that it's an exaggeration.

[Dcrux]

Safety glass ad: double-pane stuffed with cash, left on the street

If it does what you say, it ain't braggin'. The idea of the old Domino's "30 minutes or it's free" has belief structure. Too many people heap one unbelievable claim upon another -- or think they have to.

One company selling a commodity product (gravel) offers a pay-per-satisfaction guarantee. A restaurant offers tips based on performance, from 10% to 20% for exceptional service. There are as many ways to do this as there are business. The difference is you're offering a tangible performance level.

A company I ordered a product from had a web site most designers here would smirk at. The shipping package I received has had drawn artwork on it and a personal note. Again, this little shop understands what the big shots don't -- the transaction isn't the end of the sale -- it where marketing starts.

[cread]

I guess in this brave new world of Internet advertising the old training and truisms have been lost. The premise of this post is taught in Marketing 101 still as it was 30 years ago when I took the couse in college.

Get a college marketing textbook and find out what else you can learn by reading a book.

[Peter (IMC)]

Originally Posted by cread

I guess in this brave new world of Internet advertising the old training and truisms have been lost. The premise of this post is taught in Marketing 101 still as it was 30 years ago when I took the couse in college.

Get a college marketing textbook and find out what else you can learn by reading a book.

The internet is (still) a world of young people and a world of a lot of entrepeneurs that don't have any marketing degree. The internet was thought to be a new medium with new rules and new opportunities, and though that is partly true in the end, the same basic principles apply. It´s still interaction between people, the only thing different is the medium.

One funny thing I remember from talking to one of my business partners is the following. I have a technical background and if there is one thing I can complain about it is that the things I learned in school were always about how to do things, but later in life I had to learn why it is that I do those things.

My business partner has a commercial background and he complains that he was always tought why he has to do things, but never was told how to do it. He is learning in life how to do the things he was tought to do.

My focus is always on how to do things. In a technical world you need to know how to do things otherwise you accomplish nothing. In a marketing world it often is enough to say what to do and leave it to the listeners to implement it. In marketing every situation requires a slightly different method. In a technical world all solutions are done with the same tools. For example, a chinese html coder uses the exact same code as a german html coder, but a chinese marketer wouldn't be able to work in germany because he doesn't know the language or culture.

In this thread I am hoping to get into some how to's of selling online. I know it is easy to say that you need to sell your products the way your clients look at them, but how is this done? I believe I have a pretty good feel for this,.. actually a really big difficulty is getting clients to follow my directions. People have this tremendous need to bragg about their products... they really have a hard time taking out words like best, greatest, etc.

[debase23]

When I first begin talking with a client about a service or product, I review the following:
1. What it is
2. Why it is
3. What (the public) will gain if they use this product
4. How is it better

The core questions of any essay are Who, What, Why, When, Where, and How, just like in Writing 101. When creating a web site, I think the most basic reason is to answer whatever questions the site visitor will have. Not just under FAQs, either! The more theoretical questions you answer on your site, you will reduce the annoyance calls/emails and increase the qualified calls/emails.

The web is a medium where you can be as verbose as you want without too much cost. An earlier post in this forum was concerned about too much text, but you can have a brief overview paragraph on the main web page, with a link further information or whatever you want to ramble on about, available on demand. Most important, you can link to the dictionary. Why settle for a nickle word when a ten dollar one is accurate?

Once you get the basic information down, you can start brainstorming the possibilities of the sales pitch. I really like that idea of anonymus gift baskets...

The brainstorming itself is a skill that not everyone has, so don't beat yourself up over it. Sometimes sleeping on it is the best way to tackle it, and there is research to back this up.

[Dcrux]

The brainstorming itself is a skill that not everyone has, so don't beat yourself up over it.

Most of the time, it isn't the skills one admits to not having. The problems come from skills people do not admit to not having. (Or at least never bothering to develop). One is copywriting. The other is marketing. And one of the problems with brainstorming is people substitute brainstorming for customer research and user testing.

You don't have to half as brilliantly creative (output) if you can listen to users and customers (input) just a little better. Too much of technology is about your output, not properly getting feedback that tells you something important. And asking them doesn't help.

Copywriting is still the web’s biggest weakness … Who’s doing a great job of explaining their product or service? Who speaks like a human and not like a computer or a marketing machine?
—37signals

We're not talking about the hard sell, and more importantly keyword stuffing otherwise mindless text. Most sites just don't write in a way that holds a reader's interest. They fail at the basic level of visual merchandising -- confusing it with html layout.

Indeed, the biggest design flaws destroying business value typically involve:

• Communicating clearly so that users understand you. Users allocate minimal time to initial website visits, so you must quickly convince them that the site's worthwhile.
• Providing information users want. Users must be able to easily determine whether your services meet their needs and why they should do business with you.
  Offering simple, consistent page design, clear navigation

-- Growing a Business Website: Fix the Basics First

Guess what, these are basics the web doesn't concern itself with, because everyone assumes they're doing it right. ...Funneling a torrent of customers to get a trickle of conversions. ....Or one-shot sales from people who should be repeat buyers or best customers.

We have some basic idea how to spam google. It's high time people redirect their time to create compelling content that interests users.

[begabloomers]

Theory can be hard to implement. I really value examples and find when I see/read something that does work, the penny finally drops.

Could we continue the thread with a contribution of one "good" example from everyone ?

As you see I have trouble with using ten dollar words and sometimes even ten cent words. I was brought up in a very non verabal household ( lots of grunts or meaningful looks ), being verbose, especially in a convincing way does not come naturally.

The hardest part of writing copy is getting the tone right.

[Dcrux]

one "good" example from everyone ?

Good is a relative concept, lacking context. Based on debase23's comment "I really like that idea of anonymus gift baskets..." I qualify.

Give me a free sample of your money and I'll see whether it spends well. I find money "in theory" hard to implement. Not having the ability, money or intention to implement is a leading cause of theory not translating into action.

Having paid some real money concentrates the mind wonderfully. Necessity being the mother of invention, you'll practically amaze yourself at how motivated you become when you're invested in a particular course of action. I've seen people who swore they couldn't brainstorm their way out of a paper bag turn into a MacGuyver of innovative implementation nearly instantly when their money was on the line. It also instills in the mind the idea transactions make customers ...an idea which apparently needs to be underscored.

[Peter (IMC)]

The hardest part of writing copy is getting the tone right.

One way of making writing easier is to just write as if you would say it. This does require some typing skills but if you can type fast enough the words come naturally. You also need to accustom yourself to naturally create paragraphs and use captitals, commas and dots where needed.

Is it really that difficult to understand what a client is really buying? Just ask your self what the product is used for. The answer is exactly what the client is really buying.

Give some examples and I'll try to help you.

[Dcrux]

Is it really that difficult to understand what a client is really buying?

It pretty much is one of the hardest things. Otherwise this thread wouldn't be so long. Everyone would simply "step outside their product or service" and see it the way the customer does.

Writing copy or code has the similar problem.

The main goal of almost all users of group calendaring software is to avoid needless, unproductive meetings, yet the number-one task performed by almost all of that software is to create meetings. This contradiction, where the user's goals and the program's tasks are in direct opposition is symptomatic of the failure of our current design methods to work effectively. What's more, this contradiction is found almost universally in our software, regardless of its type.
-- Goal-Directed Design

When the company who developed a technology-centerd calendaring progam writes the copy, it's going to be about how easy it is to create a meeting. And they are right. The software is so good at creating meetings that soon the users have to create meetings alone, with themselves, just to get any productive work done.

When you ask the company what the customer wants to buy the answer comes back "Whatever we're selling."

This happens over and over. It isn't easy understanding what the customer wants to buy. Ask GM.

[greeneagle]

I have been watching this topic with interest since it began, because the concept of selling "hope" is a very interesting topic.

The “Augmented Product Concept” has been around for some time in the Marketing World.

Theodore Levitt opens up his 1969 book; “The Marketing Mode” with that very concept:

“Last year 1 million quarter-inch drills were sold,” Leo McGivena once said, “not because people wanted quarter-inch drills but because they wanted quarter-inch holes.”

People don’t buy products, they buy the expectation of benefits.

Marketing mundane or highly competitive products successfully, is all about differentiating those products as somehow more favorable in the consumer’s eye.

Open minded business tycoons of the past had the same insight (from the same source):

“Take cosmetics. In America it is an industry with 1968 factory sales of about $3 Billion. Yet in 1968 not a single American woman bought a penny’s worth of cosmetics.” Charles Revson, the entrepreneurial genius who built Revlon into the thriving enterprise that it is today, has said, “In the factory we make cosmetics. In the store we sell hope.” Women use cosmetics, but they don’t buy them; they buy hope…

“Hope” is the extra plus – the special promise of customer-satisfying benefits….

The Augmented Product Concept has been around for a long, long time. This discussion can take the direction of less glamorous products but selling “Hope”, even in the form of “service augmentation” is key for competitive advantage.

A good competitive analysis is absolutely essential in finding the right foothold in successful marketing, especially when touting mundane or competitive products.

Ken

[nipplecharms1]

[quote="Peter (IMC)"]

Is it really that difficult to understand what a client is really buying? Just ask your self what the product is used for. The answer is exactly what the client is really buying.

Give some examples and I'll try to help you.

Peter, I will give you a stab at it. Body jewelry, non piercing. We do ok, but just ok. The product is used to give an appearance, a look, a feel. We sell the part that is not mutilation. We want the women to feel sexy in her skin… not putting holes in it.

Ok, first paragraph down and I am lost. I guess the month I was an English major did not pay off. I told Dad the math major would only take me so far… who would have known the internet back then!

Anyone else want to give it a go? I am a willing subject. We have lots of pages where the copy just plain, dare I say it, SUCKS!

Thanks all.

Ken, as always, great insight.

Michael

[Peter (IMC)]

[quote="nipplecharms1"]

Originally Posted by Peter (IMC)

Peter, I will give you a stab at it. Body jewelry, non piercing. We do ok, but just ok. The product is used to give an appearance, a look, a feel. We sell the part that is not mutilation. We want the women to feel sexy in her skin… not putting holes in it.

Ok, first paragraph down and I am lost. I guess the month I was an English major did not pay off. I told Dad the math major would only take me so far… who would have known the internet back then!

Anyone else want to give it a go? I am a willing subject. We have lots of pages where the copy just plain, dare I say it, SUCKS!

Thanks all.

Ken, as always, great insight.

Michael

Well,.. :) I´m no expert on body jewelry, but I will give it a try. First I looked at your home page and it starts with "Our". Your product is for your customer. They are not your rings, they are their rings.

You write in your signature: "All the pleasure and none of the pain!" Is the pain really that important that not feeling it to get it makes it a selling point? I am sure it hurts a lot, but seems to me that those that are into that lifestyle don't really care about it. They probably would be considered softies going with non-pearcing body jewelry. So they may not be your most likely customers. Perhaps those with an interst, the newbies so to say, may be more likely to be your customers. (I´m just guessing here. You´re the one that needs to really figure out who your customers are and why they buy your products.)

In your home page you do try to focus on the advantages of your product, but it gets killed by your product pages which have very cold copy which constantly talk about "our product".

Ah and another thing, why are you trying to sell to just women? Seems to me that men that want their wife or girlfriend to try out body jewelry make a hit if it is non pearcing.

PostPosted: September 12 2006 Post subject:
Quote:
Is it really that difficult to understand what a client is really buying?


It pretty much is one of the hardest things. Otherwise this thread wouldn't be so long. Everyone would simply "step outside their product or service" and see it the way the customer does.

This may seem like dumb advice but you could just simply ask customers why they buy your product. Question of course is: How?

Of course it does seem kind of stupid to go to a client after he bought something from you and ask him why he bought the product. That's probably not liked by most customers. So you wouldn't want to ask it directly. But what about these:

* Add a poll to your site with questions like:
"What do you use 'product' for most?" Give 3 standard options and add an option where they can fill in their own answer. (depending on the product you would make it a different question, and you can change the question every week or so. Also make sure that people can see the results after they gave their answer.)

* Create a research email explaining you´re doing a customer satisfaction research and send it to your customers with questions like: "What did you like most about 'product'" and "What was the response from others that you showed 'product' to?" etc. (questions depend on your product of course and should be well thought about so the answers are likely to give you the information you´re really looking for.)

[greeneagle]

This is just way too an important topic to drop this short!

Here we go again (same Source):

"Nothing sells itself, not even the most venerable and tantalizing of all commodities - SEX. It has to be embellished, elaborated, amplified, enriched, perfumed, styled, corseted, colored and cosmetized. If even sex needs that kind of doctoring, no experienced male can concievably argue that other things don't."

Ken

[Dcrux]

you could just simply ask customers why they buy your product.

Conventional wisdom is that you ask people, they tell you, you know. Simple. Just ask President Kerry.

And that's exactly how online polls get built (built not designed). Scripting excludes psychology. Self-reported data is notoriously unreliable. Online polls should be used like those personal horoscopes: for entertainment only.

I could produce a list five screens long...
Doubts cast over value of web polls

Surviving Death Wish Research

New product testing over the telephone and Web surveys have become increasingly popular forms of death wish research. They're simple, they're cheap, and they're very dangerous.

Online polls are popular for the same reasons hit counters were -- they're easy to install. Unfortunately asking users steers marketers wrong for the same reason a post in a forum asking for a casual comment in review forums isn't usability testing.

Internet surveys: new ways to go wrong

After years of experience with telephone surveys, face-to-face surveys, mail surveys, and every other sort of survey we could think of, we thought we'd seen it all. Then the internet turned up: and our first few internet surveys revealed new problems we'd never encountered before.

People lie on surveys and focus groups, often unwittingly
A company conducted focus groups for their Product X, which had as its main competitor Product Q. They asked people who were using Product Q, "Why do you use Product Q instead of Product X?" The respondents gave their reasons: "Because Product Q has feature F," "Because Product Q performs G faster," "Because Product Q lets me do activity H." They added, "If Product X did all that and was cheaper, we'd switch to it."

Armed with this valuable insight, the company expended time, effort, and money in adding feature F to Product X, making Product X do G faster, and adding the ability to do activity H. They lowered the price and sat back and waited for the customers to beat a path to their door.

But the customers didn't come.

Why not?

Because the customers were lying. In reality, they had no intention of switching from Product Q to Product X at all. They grew up with Product Q, they were used to the way Product Q worked, they simply liked Product Q. Product Q had what in the hot bubble-days was called "mindshare", but what in older days was called "brand loyalty" or just "inertia".

Unlike the author, I don't think the people were lying, I think they were rationalizing. I think people were being people.

And web design people use surveys for roughly the same reasons programmers think they 'know' interaction design -- without having read a single book on the subject or having conducted a single user test. Web design people build surveys for the same reason they think a post in the review forum is about as good as interaction design testing.

Just because FrontPage or GeoCities makes it easy to dump a hit counter on the page doesn't make it good design. Just because your CMS or Forum Software allows you to dump a survey on the page doesn't mean you should.

Just having opinions about marketing doesn't mean you're a marketer.

[TrafficProducer]

focus groups for their Product X

X= could that be Windows and Product Q= ??? :)

Changing Suppliers.

Bank, for example, offer low interest... And the bank you’re using now has a poor service.. but you don't change because of all the work involved in doing so. Change on-line accounts; tell people who pay in, employers, shopping carts, and many more.

We like what we are use to...

Roll on Windows Vista see how quick users change over, a lot will be quick but...

Some users are still on Win 98, even now without support... There are use to it and know their other software will work without paying out more cash for updates for that as well.

People use the same root to work every day, because that what they know. ( at least until road works)

People lie on surveys and focus groups, often unwittingly

A lot of surveys are poorly made the force answers the person doesn’t really want to give e.g

Pick a,b or c when they want D