The two most important words in marketing are......?

Your customers are only interested in afters. Tell them what they are getting.

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A transcript of the show is written below

I love afters.

Now in some socio-economic classes, afters are called puddings or desserts, but amongst the coal dust, flat caps and whippets, of my youth, we had afters.

And as children, we weren’t excited by the meat and two veg that came first; we were only interested in the afters.

“What’s for afters?” we cried.

Likewise our customers are begging with us, pleading with us, to answer to that very same question. 

While we’re boring them with exotic descriptions of the meat and two veg, they’re shouting, “What’s for afters?”

Not sure how to answer them?

Well I’ll tell you how in this episode of Riot Point Radio. 

Customers don’t buy your product or service, they buy what happens to them after they used or consumed your service.

You’ll be familiar with the statement “you don’t buy a drill, you buy the holes it makes”, but this seems limited and sterile.

Let me give you perhaps a more powerful example

This from a former CEO of Harley Davidson

“We don’t sell bikes. Harley Davidson sells to 43-year-old accountants the ability to dress in leather, ride through small towns and have people be afraid of them—on weekends.”

See what I mean?

A Harley-Davidson customer can can play a clear, emotional movie of what their life will be like AFTER buying the product.

But what do we typically do?

We, the manufacturers of drills, motorbikes, tractors get obsessed by the features of the meat and veg. We talk horsepower, decibels, and the Youngs modulus of our rigid steel joists.

Our customers are saying, “Great, I think, but what’s for afters? “

So what can you do to translate your features to customers benefits?

Enter the two most important words in marketing: which means.

These words translate your capabilities into the language of customers afters.

For example, your marketing communications might say

- We will deliver your steel pre-bolted so you don’t need to weld at height: which means your safety rates will go up and your insurance rates will go down.

- Or digital vehicular repeater system in your fire truck adds an extra 15bdb boost to the local signal which means firefighters in the building are covered by a safety communication network at all times

Apply your two work afters converter in two areas.

1. External communications. Examine your website, product brochures or marketing communications. Wherever you have written a feature of your offer, add the words ‘Which means’ and finish the sentence. 

You should be trying to make your customer afters so enticing only a lunatic would say no!

2. Internal presentations. Start by telling the audience how they will be better off AFTER your presentation. For each key point you wish to make, add the two words, WHICH MEANS and finish the sentence.

I wrote this episode to give you a better way of communicating: which means you’ll be sell more products or ideas to your colleagues and customers, and be more successful as a result.

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