Benefits are in the Eye of the Beholder.

My friend Jim Logan (who still blogs at JSLogan) is now posting his great business advice to a new blog:  Biz Informer.  Great stuff from Jim, as always, and I highly recommend it.  Here’s a bit of a taste, from his post If Your Market or Customer Doesn’t Care, You Can’t Call it a Benefit:

Assuming you’re not the only company on the planet that provides products and services similar to yours, what is it about your offering that’s unique? As with benefits you offer your customers, your uniqueness needs to be tied to things valued by your customer. Your uniqueness is your ‘orange’...your ‘orange’ as compared to other's ‘apple.’

Being different only counts to the extent your target customers acknowledge the difference as a benefit. For example, if your difference is that you support 1000+ color choices for your ‘widgets’ however, your target customers only buy or care about 4 basic colors, then your difference in having 1000+ color choices is of no benefit to your customer and has little to no market value.

Your difference shares space with your benefits as the ground you stand on to compete for your prospective customer’s business. The things you highlight as differences are the items you most want to compete on and are in effect ‘traps’ you set for your competition.

Look for difference in your offering that is tied to the use of your product and service. Your difference is your unfair advantage over your competitors. Another way to look at it is your benefits are what your customer gets from your products or services; your difference gives cause as to why your benefits and solution are unique.

Remember...Difference without benefit is of no value to your customer. Be sure to highlight difference that is recognized by your customers as benefits they are willing to pay for.

Take a look at your marketing materials.  What “benefits” do you brag about.  Do your customers really care?