Tag Archives: benefits

(Imagen 4.)

Do your technology company’s prospects know about you?

How can your technology company increase product benefit awareness right now?

(“Right Now” is a song. Keep tuned for another song reference.)

Before showing you how to do this, let’s take a closer look at three words in the title: product, benefit, and awareness.

Then we’ll get into the how: have, know, write, and publish.

And one more “how” if blogging is hard.

Three words break the code of indifference

No apologies for the section heading, but since her dad died, Kelly Osbourne’s best song (albeit with a curious history) has been on my mind.

While Osbourne’s one word breaks the code of silence, the three words that I chose for my post title break the code of indifference. And I chose each of them—product, benefit, and awareness—carefully.

Word One: Product

Companies talk about a lot of things. Their “why” story. Their great place to work award. Their social/moral/ethical conscience.

Right now I don’t care about any of that. I care about the company’s products or services: the way they make money.

Because if prospects don’t buy these products and become customers, then their why story and awards and conscience count for zilch. There’s a time to share those stories, but for now let’s focus on the product story.

Word Two: Benefit

Now once you look at those products, they have a bunch of features. The ability to capture fingerprints at 1,000 pixels per inch. The ability to complete a third-party risk management analysis in hours, not months. The ability to deliver a completely vetted blog post in days, not weeks.

Right now I don’t care about any of that. I care about the benefits the product brings to the prospect: the things that will make them become a customer.

Because prospects don’t care about you; they only care about themselves. And if your product doesn’t provide tangible benefits to them, they’ll ignore it.

Word Three: Awareness

The third word differs from the other two, because there are multiple answers that are equally valid. I’ve just chosen to focus on one. If you subscribe to the notion of an ordered funnel (some marketers instead believe in a messy middle), then all prospects enter at the beginning of the funnel, and a subset of those prospects exit as buying customers at the end of the funnel. Using a simple three-stage funnel model, you can define those three stages as awareness, consideration, and conversion.

Right now I don’t care about consideration or conversion, although they’re obviously important. (If you have no conversions, you have no revenue, and you have no company.) For my purposes I’m focusing on awareness, or the stage in which a prospect discovers that your company has a product or service that benefits them.

So how can you raise awareness of the benefits of your product to your prospects? There are multiple methods: text, images, videos, quizzes, contests, webinars, and podcasts. Bredemarket uses many of these methods via its social media channels. But today I’m going to focus on one particular method: blog posts. But we’ll cover some of the other ones also.

One blog breaks the lack of knowledge

The reason that I’m so gung-ho about blog posts is that they can be created and distributed very quickly. Press releases can take a long time. Videos, even longer. Webinars, even longer still.

Compare that to a blog post. A sole proprietor can generate a blog post in an hour. A company can get an emergency blog post out in the same time, provided the right people are in the room.

But before you can wow the world with your product’s benefits to your prospects, you have to go through several steps. The four steps listed here (have, know, write, and publish) are somewhat, but they paint the broad brush strokes.

Step One: Have a blog site (or equivalent)

This sounds obvious, but if you don’t have a blog site, you can’t post a blog.

Using myself as an example, my Bredemarket website is hosted by WordPress. And the website has an area where I’ve filed over a thousand blog posts, including this one.

What if you don’t have a blog, or even a website? Create a LinkedIn business page or a Facebook business page or something similar and start writing there.

Step Two: Know what you’re going to say, and why you’re saying it (I ask…)

I could spend ten blog posts talking about this step alone. It’s a loaded step encompassing both strategic and tactical elements. Vision. Mission. Positioning and messaging. And finally, the topic that you want to address in this single blog post.

For now I’ll just say that you should take a deep breath before putting pen to paper (or keyboard to file).

I ask. (Here are some good questions to ask before you write something.)

Step Three: Write and rewrite what you want to say (…then I act)

I ask, then I act.

But I act iteratively.

In most cases, I don’t just write and post.

• I often create what I call a “draft 0.5,” where I get my ideas down, sleep on them, and then take a fresh second look. Often during that second look I cut out half the text.
• When working on a project for a Bredemarket client, the text bounces between me and the client. I’ll write the first draft, then the client will review it and offer suggestions, and then I’ll rewrite it. For shorter text I’ll usually have two review cycles, with three review cycles for longer text.

The important thing is to get the piece written, reviewed, and approved. While I’ve drafted pieces and sat on them for months, the true benefits of blogging occur when you publish the piece as soon as possible.

Step four: Publish and publicize

When you’re ready, publish the blog post.

• Perhaps you want to schedule the post to appear at an optimum time. For example, I am typing these words (or draft 0.5 of them anyway) on Sunday afternoon, knowing full well I won’t post this on Sunday afternoon. I’m thinking Tuesday morning.
• And maybe there’s a reason why you want to publish a post at a particular time. If a trade show begins on Monday September 15, you may want to publish the promotional blog post on Friday September 12.

Once you’ve posted, publicize it.

• If your company has an array of social media channels, you have two choices. Either you can post a link to the blog post on the social channel, or you can encapsulate the message from the blog post and repurpose it for the social channel without linking externally. Whatever gets the message out.
• Taking an example from myself, I created a video entitled “Landscape (Biometric Product Marketing Expert)” on Sunday morning. I shared this video in a blog post. I also shared it in social media posts on Bluesky, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Substack, Threads, TikTok, WhatsApp, and YouTube. The only current social channels where I didn’t share it were Flip (because it’s…landscape). If I wanted to, I could have assembled a video or created a podcast or hosted a webinar. Oh, and I’m sharing it again. (Right now.)

Depending upon your thinking time, your drafting time, and your review cycles, you can get your message out to your prospects within a week…or even within a day.

Not too bad.

But I can’t do all that!

For some people, the idea of writing a blog post can be overwhelming.

That’s why Bredemarket is here to help you increase your tech company’s product benefit awareness. (Right now.)

If you have a blog site (or a LinkedIn, Facebook, or other equivalent) and are ready to get your message out, let’s talk about next steps.