This is a guest post by Greg Bruggeman. He is a recreation professional and blogs at Professional Recreation. Check out his blog or follow him on Twitter.
Have you ever had to buy an item foreign to you? Not something huge like a car or house but something inconsequential and of little cost, like a cleaning solution. As you sit in the aisle weighing the pros and cons of two similarly priced items, something catches your eye: Scrubbing Bubbles! You think to yourself “How could I have been so stupid! All these years, I’ve been doing the scrubbing when these bubbles can scrub for me!” I had to get this product! While I was walking out of the store with my Scrubbing Bubbles, I realized I had become the victim of great benefit-based marketing.
In parks and recreation, marketing is usually feature-based marketing; we list the features of the product or service and market around those. Benefit-based marketing features the benefit the consumer will receive with your product or service. See the chart below for two examples:
Taking a different perspective can have a huge impact on your marketing results. Here are some advantages of benefit-based marketing.
1. What’s in it for me? Benefit-based marketing spells out exactly what’s in it for them.
2. It fills in some grey area. You’re an expert at what you do. You see the benefits of your service on a daily basis. A person new to your product or service will not see all the benefits of your service that you see. This is a way to inform them of those benefits.
3. It sets achievable goals for the individual. By spelling out the benefits, you are providing them with goals that others have achieved by using your service. “Lose weight”, “make new friends”, and “learn a new skill” are all goals and benefits your participants have.
4. It can still incorporate feature-based marketing. If you look at the chart above, feature-based marketing and benefit-based marketing can be used in unison to create great marketing: “Learn a new skill while making a vase” and “Lose weight and feel great while working out in our state-of-the-art facility.”
Want additional impact? Ask participants for user-impact statements. User impact statements are a first-hand account of the benefits of your program from the participant’s perspective. For instance, earlier this year I emailed one of my fitness classes asking for user impact statements. I received three emails outlining the user’s benefits of the fitness program, which I later used with their permission, in an email marketing campaign. The impact on non-users was immediate as I received numerous inquiries into the fitness program and sales increased 15%.
The next time you begin a marketing campaign, think about how you will market. A simple change in perspective may have huge impact on results.
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