Ask these questions in the interview
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?
wiifm
How to define features and benefits
Focus on the reader’s needs
If you were giving away a Hawaiian vacation to people who signed up for your webinar, which would you lead with?… Read the full article
Avoid fake benefits of the product
No ‘Pat yourself on the back for choosing us’
“Clean your face,” demands a hotel soap wrapper. No, YOU clean YOUR face! I want to respond.… Read the full article
What are benefits of a product?
Make money, save money, save time
Freud might never have figured out what a woman wants. But savvy communicators know what readers want — information that helps them:
- Make money
- Save money
- Save time
- Avoid effort
- Increase satisfaction
- Protect possessions
- Be sexy
- Escape pain
- Increase comfort
- Improve health
- Impress people
- Be stylish
- Avoid trouble
- Increase confidence
- Enhance popularity
- Save space
- Be up-to-date
- Protect investments
- Gain praise
- Avoid criticism
- Increase convenience
- Become more loved and accepted
- Be successful
- Escape routine
- Own beautiful things
- Have fun
- Increase pleasure
- Protect the environment
- Satisfy curiosity
- Protect family
- Be happy
- Feel safer and more secure
- Avoid fear
- Save energy
- Conform with others
- Be individualistic
- Increase comfort
- Satisfy appetites
- Seize opportunity
- Avoid mistakes
- Gain knowledge
- Achieve exclusivity
- Improve status
- Avoid guilt
- Protect reputation
- Be attractive
Which of these benefits could you use in your campaign?… Read the full article
What is reader-centered writing?
Avoid Institutional Narcissism
Richard Roll, an economics professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, studies narcissism in CEOs. Turns out the more narcissistic executives are, the more likely they are to overrate their skills and make bad business moves.… Read the full article
Use WIIFM communication for news release leads
Move from event to impact to engage readers
Screenwriter Nora Ephron long remembered the first day of her high school journalism class.
Ephron’s teacher announced the first assignment: to write the lead for a story to appear in the student newspaper.… Read the full article
Use WIIFM marketing to persuade
Focus on what the reader wants
If you wanted to keep teens from smoking weed, what message might you communicate?
One health organization, reports Guy Kawasaki in his book Enchantment, used the message that young people who smoked weed were five times more likely to engage in sex.… Read the full article
Steal from this What’s In It For Me example
‘Say goodbye to the 60-hour workweek’
You know that the topic is never the topic: The reader is the topic.
You’ve acknowledged that readers don’t care about “us and our stuff”; they care about themselves and their needs.… Read the full article
Answer What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)
Position your message in the reader’s best interest
Too often, communicators think the topic is the topic. But the topic is never the topic. The reader is always the topic.… Read the full article
Write headlines for your PR target audience
Write about the reader, not about us and our stuff
Front-loading your headlines with your topic word just makes sense if your readers are going to encounter those headlines in online lists — a search engine results page, for instance, or your online newsroom.… Read the full article