Are You Hiding Your Brand’s Biggest Benefits?

A key part of brand strategy is showing your potential customers how your product or service will improve their lives. But oftentimes, brand leaders get caught up in all the details, features, and specifications, and forget about their brand’s biggest benefits for customers.

I saw this firsthand recently when a house went up for sale on my favorite lake in Vermont. The listing included photos of every room and some exterior views of the house. However, it ignored the most compelling emotional benefit… 

The sunset view across the lake. This incredible view that changes with each season, with the weather, with every movement of a cloud… every day it’s different and it’s always breathtaking. You could find a nice house with a great interior anywhere, but this view is only found here. 

Don’t Bury the Lede 

When you’re offering your product or services for sale, it’s so important not to bury the lede - in other words, don’t fail to emphasize the most important part of the story: the true emotional value your product or service provides to your customers. 

For this house, I suspect that the typical real estate photos were taken and selected by the real estate broker, who probably has never been in the house during a sunset. They included everything you’d expect - a kitchen, a family room, bedrooms, a bathroom, and an exterior view facing the house.

Yet, I’ll never understand why the owners did not say, “You’re leaving out one of the best selling points! The view of the lake!”

Unfortunately, in marketing, leaving out the best selling points happens all the time. 

Brand teams, along with their supporting agencies, will focus on the product or service. They will consider all the features and benefits, as told to them by company insiders. Then they will rank the benefits based on what they collectively believe potential customers will be most responsive to, but they often fail to consider what keeps customers loyal beyond all the bells and whistles. 

See Also: Does Your Brand Messaging Have Stopping Power? 

Prioritize Benefits that Current Customers Like Best 

I suggest flipping your perspective to understand the most compelling emotional benefits that a brand has to offer. 

Start with customer insights, not internal gut instincts: 

• Ask customers what keeps them coming back for more. 

• Read reviews to understand what customers are raving about. 

• Find out what customers would miss the most if this product or service went away. 

Had the real estate broker thought to ask questions like these of the owners, they might have thought to include the property’s top feature!

Hearing directly from current customers is the best way to find out about the biggest, most desirable, emotional brand benefits – the ones that create Limbic Sparks – the ones that you can prioritize to attract new customers. 

Never forget to show them the beautiful sunset that, oh by the way, comes with a kitchen and bedrooms. Make sure your customers know about the incredible view they can’t get anywhere else.

This is all part of having what I call a Limbic Sparks Mindset – an approach to brand leadership that uses emotional insight to address how people want to feel, so your brand ignites interest and sparks desire.

Go Deeper: Preview Kevin’s Book: BRAND DESIRE

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