Learn a simple tactic to turn your offer's basic features into powerful, emotion-driven benefits that persuade prospective clients to take action.
I’ll bet you started freelancing or launched your business to pursue a passion, do something you love, be in control of your own schedule, or create your own future. And yet, you find yourself doing far less of the work you love because you’re also bogged down with all of the responsibilities of not only running your business but marketing your offers.
In fact, because you need leads and clients and no one can hire you, buy from you, or learn from you if they don’t know that you exist, maybe marketing is taking up far more of your time than you thought it would.
Here’s the thing: You’re good at what you do. You know you are. You’re actually brilliant at what you do and with the right opportunities, you can help people and make a real difference.
There’s just one problem: Marketing isn’t the thing you do best, and it’s even a bit (or a lot) uncomfortable. You may even hate it, and as a result, ignore it and just cross your fingers that clients will show up.
If you’re like most freelancers,
- You probably don’t have a marketing or business degree.
- You probably didn’t run a corporate marketing department before starting your freelance business.
- You probably weren’t a salesperson in a previous career or past life.
- But now that you have a business, you are forced to market it.
As a freelance business owner, your number one job is marketing and sales. Your number two job is delivering the work you sell to the best of your ability.
You have no choice but to get in front of your audience and be seen. You have to invest in marketing because you need people to know you exist and how you can help them. You need to be top of mind and you need your brand messaging to persuade people to hire you or buy from you — or join your email list so they can hire you or buy from you later if they’re not ready now.
Marketers Selling Marketing
You’re reading this blog post because you realized that the success of your freelance business depends on your ability to get clients and that landing new clients depends on marketing. So you started doing some research online, looking for the answers to questions like:
- How do I effectively market my freelance services?
- How can I use social media to get new clients?
- How do I get more people to visit my website?
- How can I get new clients with content marketing?
- How do I get people who come to my website to take action?
Your googling produces an endless supply of information. Jackpot! You found all of the marketers selling marketing.
You read everything, watch videos, and listen to podcasts about everything you should be doing to market your freelance business and why you should be doing it. And, while you’re spending a lot of time learning, you’re not actually learning how to do anything. Instead, you start to feel…
- Overwhelmed by all of the information.
- Irritated that so many articles regurgitate the same content.
- Frustrated because some of the information conflicts, and you’re not sure which source is right or wrong, current or outdated, or true or false.
Then Comes “Marketing With Benefits”
Just as you’re at your wit’s end, you come across an expert with an easy-to-understand article that makes marketing seem much simpler than you thought. You read a few of their blog posts, slowly the overwhelm fades, and you think, “Okay, I can do this.”
You just learned all about marketing with benefits, not features and now you understand that buyers only care about features once they know what’s in it for them. Buyers want to know how your product, course, program, or service will help them. They want to know why they should care and how it will make their life better.
So what do you do?
You focus on identifying the benefits of your offers and packages that clients will experience — maybe you even ask other people for input. Finally, you have a list of benefits for each of your services. You’re so excited that you show them to a friend who is in marketing to get their feedback and they tell you that your benefits are too basic and not compelling enough — that they won’t get anyone excited to hire you.
You’re crushed. But, not one to give up, you go back to the drawing board.
One Profound Marketing Question
Marketing with benefits is a smart approach. Emotions drive people’s buying decisions and logic makes them feel good about their purchase. That means that emotion-driven benefit statements about your offer are what will convince someone to buy and the list of features, is how they’ll justify the decision.
Now, you may be wondering: “How do I come up with compelling, emotion-driven benefit statements that make people say I NEED THAT?”
Thankfully, I’ve got the answer.
You need to learn the one simple, yet profound marketing question that will drastically improve your marketing. The one question that will help you drill down to the big, emotional, juicy benefits that will transform your marketing from ho-hum to hooray!
Here’s the question: And the result of that is?
That’s it. That’s the question.
To create highly effective brand marketing messages and benefit statements that hit ideal clients at their core, all you need to do is ask and answer this question. The trick is to keep asking this question until you can’t ask it anymore.
Here’s how it works:
- Write down a feature of the product, program, or service you are selling. Then ask: And the result of that is?
- Write down the result the feature produces. Then ask: And the result of that is?
- Write down the next-level result — the benefit of achieving that result. Then ask: And the result of that is?
- Write down the potential benefit. Then ask: And the result of that is?
- Write down the dream destination or the big impact the benefit will create…
Again, the secret to the success of this question is to keep asking it until you there are no more answers. This is how you move past the basic, boring, blah benefits that everyone uses to identify the meaningful, emotional, impactful benefits that speak to your ideal clients’ greatest desires and eliminate the obstacles in their way.
Here’s an example of how it works:
- Feature: Healthy And Delicious Recipes
- And the result of that is? Cooking at home more.
- And the result of that is? Eating healthier meals (more vegetables).
- And the result of that is? Losing weight and having clearer skin.
- And the result of that is? Feeling better about myself and having more confidence.
Another way to think about it is:
- Feature: Dinner Done In 30-Minutes
- And the result of that is? Spending less time cooking dinner.
- And the result of that is? Spending more quality time with my family.
- And the result of that is? Having more family game nights.
- And the result of that is? Strengthening my relationship with my kids.
- And the result of that is? Creating more fun family memories.
Do you see how simple it was to go from a boring feature to more emotional benefits?
Where it gets even more interesting is when you ask your best clients about the results and benefits they experience working with you, and get them to answer the question: And the result of that is? Trust me, they will tell you exactly what big, juicy, emotional benefits you should use in your marketing.
I know a lot of marketing tactics are complex and they require a lot of work. This one is simple. What’s even better is that anyone can use it to quickly and easily improve the quality of their marketing messages and create powerful calls to action that convert — even you…
So go give it a try!
