Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Sell Benefits to Fit Shoppers' Values

"Sell the sizzle, not the steak." American advertising pioneer Albert Lasker said this in the days when almost everybody agreed that eating red meat was good for you and the sound of sizzling fat made it an even better treat. Mr. Lasker was advising us to tell our shoppers about the benefits of using our products and services, not about the technical specifications.
     But now our shoppers want to know about both specifications and benefits. They also want to know how the products and services we sell fit into their values systems. Not just good value for their money, but a good fit with their values. Sell the sizzle as well as the steak. Sell the values as well as the value.
     Sell to the values because what we consume is less important than what we think we're consuming: A team of researchers from France, Australia, and the U.S. told study participants they'd be given either a beef sausage roll or a vegetarian roll to eat. But those tricky researchers had lied to half the participants, who actually were served the other entrĂ©e from the one they were promised.
     One group of those participants granted a high rating to what they ate, regardless of whether they actually ate the meat or vegetable version, as long as they thought it was meat. What does this have to do with values? Unlike the veggie fans, these meat elitists showed up on psychological testing as embracing values of power and strength.
     Do you know the values of your target market—-what they consider to be especially important in their lives? Is it power and strength? Safety and security? Trust? Perseverance? Playfulness? Craftiness? Friendships? Something else altogether?
     How well are you weaving messages about those crucial values into your advertising and your salesperson-to-customer contacts?

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