Usable Words

Emotional benefits? Business clients? If that combination sounds strange to you, keep reading.

If you’re nodding your head, on the other hand, you probably already know about using emotional benefits as a way of persuading potential customers they need you.

This idea has become pretty well-accepted in consumer product marketing circles (which doesn’t mean it’s always applied well of course!). But when it comes to business to business (B2B) marketing, there’s still an assumption out there that the only relevant benefit of any product or service is the “bottom line” or return on investment.

That’s a mistake. A big one. When you’re talking to a business, you’re talking to a person within that business. And business people are just as emotion-driven as anyone else.

Yes, business people need to justify their expenses. But the key word there is “justify”. By all means, follow through with some convincing-sounding numbers. Flatter business customers into thinking their buying decision is 100% rational. But start by appealing to their emotions, because emotion is what actually drives their behaviour.

To get you started, here are some emotional benefits you might think about offering potential customers if you’re in a B2B industry:

1. Be less busy.
2. Stop spending time on routine tasks.
3. Spend more time doing what you like.
4. Spend less time doing what you hate.
5. Make your workplace fun.
6. Make your workplace healthy.
7. Make your workplace relaxing.
8. Make your workplace green.
9. Look more professional.
10. Look less boring.
11. Look bigger than you are.
12. Find out what your customers think about you.
13. Understand what drives your customers.
14. Help your customers understand what drives you.
15. Make your customers love you.
16. Make your customers want to spend more time with you.
17. Make your customers want to tell their friends about you.
18. Get wonderful staff.
19. Keep the wonderful staff you’ve got.
20. Cope with change.
21. Cope with stasis.
22. Learn to recognise opportunity.
23. Don’t be left behind.
24. Beat the recession.
25. Get talked about.
26. Get talked about in better terms.
27. Impress strangers.
28. Learn stuff you don’t know about your staff.
29. Learn stuff you don’t know about yourself.
30. Help people learn about the great things you’ve done.
31. Persuade people to forgive your mistakes.
32. Get on better with other departments/branches.
33. Look like a hero in front of your boss/board/shareholders.
34. Convince your boss/board/shareholders you’ve earnt your salary (or your bonus!).
35. Get a promotion.
36. Be more powerful
37. Become the boss.
38. Help your community.
39. Make history.
40. Change the world.

What do you think? Which ones have I missed?

(I know a popular one is “Work on your business, not in your business”, but I kind of hate that one. Remind me to talk about why some time.)

Photo: Diabolic Preacher

Am I the only person who’s sick of being talked to like a 14-year-old boy gamer?

“10 tips for killer copy!” “Dominate your niche with these killer content ideas!” “Killer strategies for destroying the competition!”

It’s all a bit…macho, don’t you think?

What if we stopped channeling Jean-Claude Van Damme and tried channeling Jane Austen instead, just for a change?

Anyone agree? What other copywriting clichés annoy the bejesus out of you?

Image: simon.wright

My credit union (which, by the way, is a terrific organisation that employs excellent customer service staff) has recently launched a fancy new website that’s mostly very pleasant to use. But there’s one thing I think they’re doing very wrong: using modal windows to advertise their products.

It’s been a much-discussed trend in web interface design lately, littering sites with these windows that require users to take some action before they can get on with what they came to do. They do look pretty nifty and have their uses – they can work really well for quickly displaying full-sized versions of thumbnail images, for instance. In fact, I’m planning to have a (user-initiated) modal on my website, so I’m certainly not against them in principle.

But when they’re used for advertising, they really do suck – it’s the ultimate form of “interruption marketing” because users can’t get on with anything else until they’ve interacted with the ad in some way. On a banking site, which existing customers use on a daily basis to accomplish specific tasks, that’s an even bigger sin.

When my credit union started using modals to advertise credit cards a couple of months ago, I wrote to them with a polite objection. They sent me a prompt reply, which was great, but they didn’t really seem to be taking in what I was saying. They pointed out that there was a cookie preventing anyone seeing the ad more than once (fair enough, but some people disable cookies, and maybe once is one too many). And they went on to tell me again how wonderful the credit card was. So I guess they think it’s OK to interrupt people if the product you’re selling is good.

This week I see the modal ads are back, this time advertising mortgages. What do you think – am I being a drama queen, or do you agree that this is really not on for a financial institution?

Photo credit: House of Sims