Two Simple Words that Will Translate Exactly What Your Product or Service Does for Your Target Market

I specialize in telling the stories of all different sorts of businesses. 

It’s always funny, right after I get hired to help them out with their copy, they always send me a first brief overview of what their company does - sometimes even just the tagline of what their business does, and my first reaction is often…

What the hell does that mean?

I don’t know if they’re just trying to impress me and the rest of the world, but it’s usually loaded with huge words, jargon-y terms, and overly professional language you’d use to impress the CEO of a Fortune 500 company.

(And he wouldn’t understand either, he’d just nod along because it’d be weird if he didn’t know what they meant.)

I’m going to teach you two words that will help you translate your messages so damn well, even newborn babies will be able to understand exactly what your product does. 

Those two words are:

Which means.

I already knew those words Elliott…

Yeah, obviously. Read on to see why these two words are so important to your sales message.

Ever heard of Features vs. Benefits?

If you’re nodding at your computer, great. If you’re not nodding at your computer, also great. Because I’m going to tell you.

• Features are purely the logistical functions of your product or service. 
• Benefits are how those things will improve the customer’s life.

Which one do you think people care about more? Let’s look at some examples.

• Feature - This blanket has a 1,000 thread count.
• Benefit - It’s the most comfortable blanket you’ll ever sleep on.
• Feature - The new iPhone holds 512GB.
• Benefit - It can hold every song, photo, game and app you could ever imagine.
• Feature - The Lamborghini Aventedor’s max power is 770bhp@8500rpm.
• Benefit - It’s extremely fast. 

As a casual passerby that looks at an ad for about two seconds before clicking away, which one of these sentences do you care about at all?

Yes, the feature. All any of us care about is how your product is going to make our lives better.

It doesn’t matter how long you spent designing your product, how you’re using the best materials in the world, how your product beats all of the competition by .0002 flibberglibs - 

We only care about how it will improve our lives - in the simplest way possible. 

Have you guys figured out how we’re going to use our magical translator words? Let’s try them on our last examples.

This blanket has a 1,000 thread count, which means it’s the most comfortable blanket you’ll ever sleep on.

Done. Translated. Boom.

Oh, not simple enough? You can literally use our nifty new tool as many times as you want to simplify as far as you want.

• This blanket has a 1,000 thread count, which means it’s the most comfortable blanket you’ll ever sleep on, which means you’ll wake up in the morning as a happier person, which means your boss will notice the improvement in your work, which means you’ll get that next promotion, which means the woman or man of your dreams will take notice of you, which means you’ll marry the love of your life, which means you won’t die alone.

This blanket has a 1,000 thread count, which means you won’t die alone. I will take one blanket, thank you.

How many true benefits are we hinting at here?

1. You'll sleep better. (relief)
2. You'll feel better. (wellness)
3. Related to your bed. (sex)

• The new iPhone holds 512GB, which means it can hold every song, photo, game and app you could ever imagine, which means you don't need to carry multiple devices, which means you won't need to carry a ton of stuff in your pockets, which means you can wear more fashionable clothes, which means your crush will fall in love with you, which means you won’t die alone.
• The Lamborghini Aventedor’s max power is 770bhp@8500rpm, which means it’s extremely fast, which means yada yada, which means you won't die alone.

Am I thinking about something too much? Or is this just basis of why we buy anything…hmm...

Try it my friends. Take your big-worded, jargon-y, CEO-level descriptions, and translate it down a few times for me. 

Simplify it for me like I’m in the 5th grade.

Because let’s face it, that’s about the grade level all of our attention spans are at. 

TLDR

Simplify your message by adding "which means" to the end of your description (as many times as you need to) and simplify it until a 5th grader could understand it.

This is just one part of the puzzle. Telling the story of your company takes someone who writes stories that will leave your prospects crying and laughing and contemplating life while handing you their credit card.

Someone like....me!

If you need compelling story-based copy that will get your prospects moving to the next part of your sales funnel, reach out. Now.

[email protected]