"So What?" is a Power Marketing Question

I was reading a new client's site today for a killer innovation - but it's all technobabble right now.  With a lot of adjectives thrown together as if from a chinese buzzword menu.

We technology marketers tend to fixate on what we know and love about our technology value - which may or may not be attractive (or even understandable) to our audiences.

Never ever forget: Distinct Value is in the eye of the beholder - and the only beholder that matters is your buyer. Which is why....

"So What?" is a power marketing question.

For every whizbang technology feature that you want to shout to the world about, simply ask,

"So What?" 

• What does this mean to you, my customer?  In your words, not mine.
  
• What specifically does my technology allow you to accomplish, resolve or change? How does  that benefit your business?
  
• What would another business like yours want to know about what we do?

Get focused on answering the "So What?" question from your customers' perspective - not your own.  To be most effective, ask your business buyers, not only the technical users. (Yes, we need to woo the technical buyer, but we need power with the checkbook, too.) 

So What in Action

The Claim:  Our software delivers 4x the performance of the competition thanks to industry-leading architecture and highly optimized design."

The So What?:   Try some of these statements on for size.

•  A customer in the retail industry was able to complete 4 times the number of orders in the same amount of time while improving inventory management by a factor of 2.
•  A financial services customer was able to scale their web-based transactions by a factor of 5, empowering them to more than double the number of customers they could effectively serve.
•  Thanks to 25% increased transaction volumes,  our software paid for itself in under 3 months.

Power marketing answers the 'So What?' question for your prospects and customers. With much more umph than the cool technology/features we tend to love.

Only in rare occasions is the buying decision based solely on technology. 

So start thinking beyond your cool technology if you want to power high-velocity growth.

Start asking everyone around you, "So What?"

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Learn more about Power Positioning for your technology business. Sign up for my FREE Positioning Training videos here.  You'll receive seven weeks of video lessons on how to Defy Gravity in your thinking and Power Position for high Velocity Growth. 

Photo courtesy of PNEvans