Too often, communicators think the topic is the topic. But the topic is never the topic. The reader is always the topic.

Here’s how it works:

Before:

Again, the visual assets for the homepage are due on May 16. 

Assigning colleagues a task? Make it go down easier by focusing on What’s In It For Me:

Make sure your homepage is pixel perfect. Please review it and have visual assets ready before it goes live on May 16. 

Here’s another task for colleagues:

Please review the new name ideas for our transformation framework by EOW to ensure we collect customer feedback during next week’s focus groups.

Move colleagues to act by leading with the WIIFM:

To wrap up your transformation project on time, be sure to review the new name ideas posted in slack by EOW.

Before:

Want to know more about the Predictive Support solution?

Why would I? What’s in it for me?

You can now save time and money by predicting when your print/scan devices will fail with our predictive support solution.

Before:

XYZ’s coordinated addiction-care program can help you manage pain while ending your reliance on opioids.

You’ve got a good benefit there. Why bury it behind the name of your organization and your program? Focus on the WIIFM to readers:

Reduce your pain and end your reliance on opioids with XYZ’s coordinated addiction-care program.

Before:

The new XYZ integration is a smart, compelling solution for your business that will allow you to drive sales productivity and maximize your current technology stack.

Don’t bury the benefits behind an 8-word description of your product. Instead, lead with the WIIFM:

Streamline sales processes and get more value out of your investment with the new XYZ integration.

Before:

Using partners in deals is both beneficial to you and your customers. 

Pro tip: “Benefit” is not a benefit. Focus on what I can do differently by partnering with customers:

Increase your quarterly sales up to three times and cut your customer’s project implementation time in half by using partners in your deals.

Before:

With our updated ABC, you can now measure each engagement and iterate based on actual data.

That sounds helpful. Why not lead with that WIIFM?

Close more deals and find out what’s working with our updated ABC. You can measure results down to the click.

Before:

You should take this survey because it will help our team help you close more deals.

Don’t lead with the task. Focus on how your ask will help me:

Get the tools you need to hit your sales goals. Let us know how we can help you with this survey.

Answer What’s In It For Me (WIIFM).

As a reader, which would you rather read: the befores or afters? About the product or service or about how the product or service will help you?

How can you reframe your message to focus on the reader instead of on your organization and its stuff?

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Having trouble finding reader benefits? Maybe you need to ask different questions.

Ask your subject matter experts:

• What happens if our customers buy this product or service?
• What happens if they don’t?
• What happens if members of the community get behind this public policy?
• What happens if they don’t?

Or take a tip from Kelly Parthen, PR manager at Agilent Technologies. She keeps asking her subject matter experts: “So what?” “So what?” “So what?” Eventually, they get to the benefit.
Keep asking, and you’ll hit benefits like:

They’ll be able to watch twice the TV in half the time.

They’ll ensure that their children’s school buildings aren’t constructed of corrugated cardboard.

They’ll get the body of Kendall Jenner while following an all-Twix-bar diet.

However you find them, benefits will make your products, services and ideas — not to mention your copy — more relevant and valuable to your reader.

That means you will…

Having trouble finding your benefits?

Try prompting your subject matter expert with the line “that means they will …” The end of that sentence is likely to be a benefit.

Your subject matter expert says, “We can handle our client’s internal audit functions.”

You say, “That means our clients will …”

Your subject matter expert says: “That means our clients will free up their own employees for bottom-line projects and better control the costs of producing internal audits.”

Now you’re talking benefits.

Present your benefits, too.

“That means you will …” also makes a great way to present your benefits:

Try it.

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If you were giving away a Hawaiian vacation to people who signed up for your webinar, which would you lead with? The vacation, or the webinar?

From what I’ve seen — from training more than 25,000 communicators in more than 1,000 organizations over 20 years — most folks would choose the webinar.

Sign up for our webinar
and get a dream trip to Hawaii!

But leading with the webinar won’t grab your readers’ attention and move them to act.

Instead, lead with the benefits and substantiate with the features. Focus on your reader’s wants and needs first, then follow up with your organization and its products, services and ideas.

Steal a trick from these Silver Anvil winners.

These benefits leads from PRSA Silver Anvil-winning campaigns are great models of leading with the benefits and substantiating with the features.

Make the switch.

Sometimes, a small switch is all you need to put the benefits first. Check out these before-and-afters:

Next time you write a press release, brochure or newsletter article, put the reader benefits first.

The post How to define features and benefits appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

“Clean your face,” demands a hotel soap wrapper. No, YOU clean YOUR face! I want to respond.

I’ve been seeing a lot of messages like these: messages that sound like benefits but that really are not. Fake benefits.

These fake benefits mirror the structure of benefits messages — Do/this (Save/money) — but not their spirit. Instead, the structure of fake benefits is “Non-benefit-focused verb/feature.”

The structure of benefits messages is:

Do/this

For instance:

Save/money

The structure of fake benefits is:

Non-benefits-focused verb/feature

For instance:

Enjoy/our new product

To move readers to act, avoid these three types of fake benefits.

1. Get our product.

Yesterday, I received an email with this subject line:

“Learn more about New Media Gateway”

While that looks like a benefits statement — it starts with a verb and the implied “you,” after all — it’s actually a fake benefits statement. Its real subject is not the reader, but the communicator’s organization.

Instead of using your verb to point to your product, service, program or idea, write about what readers can do with your product, service, program or idea.

2. ‘Congratulations on choosing us.’

We tend to send these messages out after we win an award: “Pat yourself on the back for choosing us.”

With these benefits, we’re really writing about how great we are:

Get XYZ feature.

Reap many rewards.

Rely on our 75 years of experience.

Value the attention we pay to detail.

Appreciate our dedication to accuracy.

Pat yourself on the back for choosing us.

Instead, write about how the readers’ lives will be different because they chose you.

3. Go to your room.

We learned the imperative voice as the command voice in high school. And it can be a command: Go to your room. Make your bed. Take out the trash.

But you use the imperative voice to move people to act, make it the invitation voice — not the command voice: Save money. Make money. Save time. Avoid effort.

Avoid the command voice. These messages are actually tasks:

Take our class.

Stop by our booth.

Attend our conference.

Subscribe to our ezine.

Sign up for our webinar.

Make it the invitation voice instead. Rather than tell readers what to do, let them know what they’ll get when they do it:

Learn to double your income when you take our class.

Get a chance at a free Apple Watch when you stop by our booth.

Network with peers — maybe even meet your next boss — when you attend our conference.

Nix ‘get our feature.’

The hardest part of crafting a benefits statement is finding the benefit, not writing the line.

So dig in. Think. Don’t be satisfied with a statement like “Get our feature.” Learn enough about the subject you’re writing about and your audience members to figure out what the former will do for the latter.

Remember what you learned in kindergarten: When you cheat, you only hurt yourself. But when you cheat on benefits statements, you hurt yourself, your readers and your organization.

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Which of these product release leads would you rather read? This one?

Or this one?

Me too. In the first, conventional release lead, I’m not going to make it to the second acronym. But I’ll pay attention to the company and product name in the second — a PRSA Silver Anvil Award winner — because the writer focused on reader benefits first, “us and our stuff” second.

“Present the key element … that explains how your story can benefit Forbes readers.”

— Bruce Upbin, senior editor at Forbes

So lead with the benefits and substantiate with the features. Focus on your reader’s needs first, then follow up with your organization and its products, services and ideas.

“Editors don’t care that ‘Amalgamated Technologies Has Released the New XYZ-2000 Coated Cable Bushing,'” writes Stinson Liles, principal and co-founder at Red Deluxe, “They are much more likely to be interested in ‘Phone Companies Use New Coated Cable Bushing for Difficult Underground Connections.’”

So sell the journalist on your products’ value to the journalist’s readers.

Steal a trick from these Silver Anvil winners.

These benefits leads from PRSA Silver Anvil-winning campaigns are great models of leading with the benefits and substantiating with the features.

Lead with the benefits …

Employers now have a better way to measure, monitor and manage employee absences …

Do you dread shopping for new appliances? Are you tired of being bumped in narrow aisles, searching for customer assistance and even purchasing appliances that don’t fit your needs?

On average, an employer can expect that 10 percent of its employee population will be out on a disability leave during the course of the year. To help employers better understand the types of disabilities affecting their industries and how targeted workplace solutions can mitigate associated costs and employee absences

… Substantiate with the features

… thanks to UnumProvident Corporation’s (NYSE: UNM) expanded online Comparative Reporting & Analysis (CR&A) information services.

If so, the new Northridge-area Maytag store was designed just for you.

… MetLife has made available The MetLife Series on Championing Productivity …

Make the switch.

Sometimes, a small switch is all you need to put the benefits first.

Instead of:

XYZ’s Workbench Sensor Designer tool enables engineers to quickly move from concept to simulation to prototype in a few keystrokes.

Write:

Engineers who typically take weeks to design sensor systems can now complete their designs in minutes, thanks to a new, online design tool.

Instead of:

XYZ Corporation (NYSE: XYZ) today announced that print and copy costs can be reduced up to 20 percent with our new ABC product.

Write:

Organizations can reduce their print and copy costs up to 20 percent with XYZ Corporation’s (NYSE: XYZ) new ABC product.

Instead of:

Everquest “Seeds of Destruction” is the new expansion for the Everquest video game franchise.

Write:

Gamers can level up their character to 85 in the latest expansion of Everquest’s “Seeds of Destruction.”

Next time you write a press release, brochure or newsletter article, put the reader benefits first.

“There’s nothing wrong with a story about a new product,” says Stephany Romanow-Garcia, senior process editor, Hydrocarbon Processing. “But readers want to know, ‘How am I going to use it?’ I’m not interested in ‘new and improved.”

The post Write leads for your public relations target audience appeared first on Wylie Communications, Inc..

Quick! Which would you rather have: Apple’s new incredibly responsive A9X chip? Or the ability to perform complex jobs like editing 4K video quickly and smoothly via your iPad?

And that’s the problem.

Your readers don’t care about your organization and its stuff. They care about themselves and their needs.

So to sell your products, services and ideas, you need to show how your organization and its stuff can fill your readers’ needs. One way to do that: Translate your message from features into advantages into benefits.

So don’t sell me a MacBook Air. Sell me on the time I’ll save with the Air.

The problem is, most readers can’t get from “AX9 chip” to “perform complex jobs like editing 4K video” by themselves. In fact, sales research tells us that some 70% of our readers can’t translate from advantages to benefits without help, says Linda Miller, president of The Marketing Coach.

So don’t rely on your readers to translate. That’s your job.

Lead with the benefits.

Once you’ve identified your features, advantages and benefits, you’ll want to lead with the benefits and substantiate with the features. (Or, as my clients at Verizon Wireless say, “We’ve been doing a lot of B-A-F-ing.”)

That means you’ll focus on your reader’s needs first, then follow up with your organization and its stuff.

Here’s how it looks, with examples from Apple’s latest iPad promo:

• [Benefit] View movies that look like the big screen on the small screen with [Feature] our new display, which uses the same color space as the digital cinema industry. With [Feature] 25% greater color saturation than previous iPad models, colors are more [Advantages] vivid, true to life and engaging.
• [Benefit] Perform complex jobs like editing 4K video quickly and smoothly with the new iPad Pro’s [Advantages] incredibly responsive [Feature] A9X chip.
• [Benefit] Lose yourself in your favorite apps and games, thanks to our [Advantages] graphics performance. [Feature] With double the graphics performance of iPad Air 2, iPad Pro offers [Advantages] detailed visuals, fluid animations and like-real effects.
• [Benefit] Shoot beautiful photos and video with our [Feature] 8-megapixel iSight camera. [Benefit] You’ll always look great thanks to True Tone flash, [Feature] which captures real skin tones in every kind of lighting.
• [Benefit] Shoot beautiful photos and video with our [Feature] 8-megapixel iSight camera. [Benefit] You’ll always look great thanks to True Tone flash, [Feature] which captures real skin tones in every kind of lighting.

How can you sell your organization and its stuff by focusing first on your readers and their needs?

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