Digital marketing

features and benefits

Is This Obsession “Killing” Your Dental Marketing Content?

An obsession. You probably have one (or more).

I do.

Relax. This isn’t confession time.

But I will confess to one thing. I’m obsessed these days with helping dental website owners and developers end their obsession with feature-heavy content.

Features have their place. Actually, they have one strategic purpose…and overuse isn’t one of them.

My so-called, “rant” is valid these days. It’s a “sore-spot” with me primarily because I’m still recoiling from related (“You didn’t tell people how great we are…”) push-back on a client’s web page copy I recently shipped (it’s not the first time and probably won’t be the last).

Let’s define what I mean by “features.” They are any aspect or related wording that describes your product or service.

Think color, clarity, class, or construction. Features are the easiest to spot and “spin” when writing copy.

Typically, feature-intense writing requires less creative energy. Why?

You’re merely describing what’s in front of you or how you want your reader, buyer, customer, client, or patient to see your product/service.

Features are easy to recognize because they’re commonly accented with words like “state-of-the-art,” “cutting-edge,” or any word ending in “-est” (e.g. “latest,” “greatest,” “best,” etc).

The comparative truth about features in your copy/content

Features have their place. Where?

Alongside compelling benefits.

Features appeal to your patient’s or client’s logic. Benefits connect your patient’s or client’s emotional desire with your product or service.

Compel a response with BENEFITS.

Then…

Rationalize their decision with FEATURES.

Copywriter and author, Bob Bly, shares a classic illustration of the Feature-Benefit issue in his book, The Copywriter’s Handbook.

“Features and Benefits of a #2 Pencil

Feature: The pencil is a wooden cylinder surrounded by a graphite core. Benefit: Can be re-sharpened as often as you like to ensure clean, crisp writing.

Feature: One end is capped by a rubber eraser. Benefit: Convenient eraser lets you correct writing errors cleanly and quickly.

Feature: Eraser is attached with a metal band. Benefit: Tight-fitting metal band holds eraser snugly in place – so you’ll always have an eraser when you need it.

Feature: Pencil is 7.5 inches long. Benefit: Long length ensures long writing life.

Feature: Pencil is 1/4 inch in diameter. Benefit: Slender shape makes it easy to hold and comfortable to write with.

Feature: Pencil is a #2. Benefit: Graphite core is blended so that it writes smoothly , yet is crisp and easy-to-read.

Feature: Yellow exterior. Benefit: Bright yellow exterior ensures that it’s easy to spot on a messy desk or in a crowded drawer.

Feature: Sold by the dozen. Benefit: Sold in a convenient 12-pack so if you lose one, you don’t have to run to the store for another. Also, more cost-effective.” (pp. 59-60)

Understand that features have their place in your content. But ultimately, the “selling/compelling point” is the benefit.

How to Turn Your Obsession with Features Into More Compelling, Benefit-Focused Content

For every feature – think benefit

Review Bly’s #2 pencil illustration. You’ve held a pencil, placed a pencil behind your ear, chewed on a pencil for years, right?

And you probably didn’t give thought to the benefits listed in the example. But they are present nonetheless.

The task of your copy/content is to uncover the hidden benefits, expose them to your reader, and compel them to take action as result. This is the hard work of copywriting.

  • Train your senses to see, hear, smell, touch benefits. View your products/services through a sensory lens.
  • List every benefit you can think of for the product/service you’re promoting. Build your content around them.

Refuse to list a feature in your copy/content unless it’s accompanied by a compelling benefit.

Ruthlessly eliminate feature-fluff in your copy. I’ll go so far as to say that using fluff words (”state-of-the-art,” “cutting-edge,” etc) is the lazy approach.

Again, it takes work to uncover and craft content around benefits. Then apply the extra effort to rationalize them with features.

Ask why your newest equipment, service, product, etc is “state-of-the-art.” How does that “fluff-wording” translate to a compelling benefit? Write to that!

Get emotional.

Compelling copy grabs your reader’s emotions. It’s not only about tears and fears (though those are strong emotional responses).

The better part of emotions involves painting a picture for your reader. It’s guiding them to see themselves using, benefiting from, and being changed by your product or service.

A feature gets their attention. A benefit compels a decision.

  • Think like your reader/client/patient. What would you feel, sense, believe about the product/service?
  • List the emotional triggers that your product/service touches on. Attach a benefit to that emotion.

Get obsessed about your copy/content. But make sure there’s a benefit.

Continue Reading
power of noticing

The Power of Noticing and How to Use It to Simplify Your Dental Marketing

What she saw on a billboard during a cross-country trip resonated with her. And that word (resonate) is what will separate success from failure in your dental marketing.

Tara Gentile shared her billboard observation in a recent podcast I listened to. Specifically, it was a billboard promoting the interstate location of a Shell gas station that captured her attention.

The headline, she admitted, cut through all the marketing noise observed on countless other billboard promotions along the roadside. This one contained two words in addition to the company logo and the corresponding roadside exit number.

Ready…? Here goes…

“Clean restrooms”

That was it! It occurred to her that what’s on the mind of a road weary traveler isn’t the mass of messages screaming for attention from billboard after billboard.

What a weary traveler wants, desires, and needs is a clean place to stop when necessary. Simple as that.

The emotional, desire oriented pathway from your marketing message to a patient or client relationship is paved with more than good intentions. These days, your approaching message matters.

Approach precedes landing

Gentile also observed the billboard messages that were “lost” on her and probably other travelers. Direct messages from churches calling readers to “Repent,” other companies demanding that you buy, try, call, purchase, don’t live without, etc their particular product or service fail miserably on “approach.”

There must be a better way.

I encourage you to listen to Tara Gentile’s podcast interview here .

I’ll share a few front-of-mind take-aways in this post (and perhaps a few more in the weeks ahead).

The Power of Noticing that Simplifies Your Dental Marketing Approach

Watch

This isn’t about trends. It IS about the specific things your patients/clients are interested in.

Service providers are accustomed to marketing according to the hammer-nail analogy. When you’re a hammer you see everything as a nail.

Practically speaking, there’s more to your connection than serving up what you assume everyone is waiting around to need.

Need typically drives want or desire. And when you’re present in the gap when need arises you’ll make a profitable connection a higher percentage of the time.

For example, online dental marketing often relies solely on positioning via keywords – the SEO Superstars! Your challenge via online dental marketing is to show up in a simple, useful, value-driven way that reveals you’ve noticed their current need(s).

  • Tune into how your patients/clients see themselves. Words and comments leave clues.
  • Turn their words into images. Build “stories” (word pictures) around their needs, wants, and desires illustrated through their comments in post-op consultations, post-treatment follow-up, buyer-personas, post-purchase reviews, etc.

Observe

This is a higher altitude level of “watching.” Your powers of observation provide a sharper understanding about what your patients/clients desire when you make strategic observations.

Observation gets you closer to intuition. When marketing lacks intuition it becomes “noise.”

Listen

This is where conversations occur. Listening puts you in the proximity of hearing what’s being said.

Your ability to listen and act on what you hear will separate you from the mass of other marketers who rely solely on shock-and-awe (the creative fluff or in-your-face approaches that’s typical of so much marketing these days).

To listen you must quiet yourself. It’s next to impossible to listen when you’re talking.

  • Listen intuitively. Avoid making assumptions about what your patients or clients need. Get to know them through intentional surveys, deciphering their chair side questions, etc.
  • Listen between-the-lines. What is not being said, but is still very real to your audience?

You lose nothing, really, by taking a more simple approach to your dental marketing message. Though you stand to gain more marketing-weary-travelers if you’ll deliver what resonates with them.

Continue Reading