What do businesses actually sell to customers?

In one of the previous articles, we wrote about how the consumer has changed in the “digital age”. The change accompanying it is also very important in that it actually sells any business (including startups, web studios, agencies, and their customers) to its consumers.

We believe that understanding these changes is very important for companies in our market for two reasons.

• Companies will better understand how and what they sell to their customers. Thanks to this, they will be able to build a more effective interaction with their customers.
• Companies will better understand how and what their customers sell to their customers. Thanks to this, they will be able to create more effective tools for him.

So, let's figure out what actually any business sells ... a promise.

Background

The history of the issue can be easily traced on one example, in which we take Nescafé coffee ( wiki ) in our speeches and seminars .

Instant coffee appeared as a technology for preserving coffee beans in the conditions of its overproduction. Simply put, Brazil needed to do something with excess coffee, and they learned to process and save it. In the 40s of the XX century, it was a completely new product, which was advertised in terms of functional advantages .



Years passed, other companies mastered the technology, and Nescafé got a lot of competitors. Having passed the stage of packaging functional characteristics into a product , advertisers began to indirectly inform the consumer of non-functional characteristics.



After watching this classic video, the consumer imagines South America, sultry and exotic, and at the same time quenching thirst. Of course, in today's advertising realities it is more like an advertisement for a soft drink, but at that time the advertisement clearly positioned the non-functional advantage: “real coffee from South America”. And she did it so cool that this music varies from video to video so far.



The next step was the sale of experience : physical and emotional. In the process of watching this video, the viewer first feels the chill of an early morning and the dampness of the fog above the lake, and then he almost physically feels the heat of a hot cup of coffee (by the way, that’s why this is a mug of red, “hot” color) and the smell of coffee from the haze above the cup. The final chord - the heroes grab cups with both hands with a classic gesture, and this gesture automatically causes warmth in the hands of the viewer. Do you often hold such a cup?

There is nothing about South America or coffee solubility in this ad. But on the other hand, the consumer experiences the whole gamut of physical and emotional (we didn’t even touch on this side) emotions after watching the advertisement.



Finally, the peak (for today) of excellence is the 2011 Mexican Nescafé ad. In this video (by the way, the winner of international advertising festivals) there is nothing even about experiences.

This advertisement promises transformation, transformation in the future.

Think about it, this advertisement says: with the help of a protagonist (uncle with a clock, who is the personification of Nescafé), heroes (that is, you) can get rid of problems in the family, from total immersion in work, from loneliness, from a lack of positive emotions. The video has a powerful dramatic skeleton that makes you run and buy this damn coffee.

So what?

And the fact that today all businesses one way or another sell their customers the promise of future transformation , even if the businesses themselves are not aware of this. They do not even sell the promise of a solution to the problem, as we used to think, but the promise of a positive transformation of life. If it is B2B, then the promise is given to business owners, management, employees, and so on.

Therefore, selling today is not the stage of attracting a client until the moment of transferring money to the cash register.

Today, a sale is a promise of the transformation desired by the client and keeping his promise. This has a lot in common with consumer non-linear travel.. The business makes a promise until the time of purchase. But after the purchase, the stage of use experience begins, at which it turns out whether the business has fulfilled its promise to the client or not. If yes, then the client becomes more loyal, if not, it negatively affects other consumers at the stage of active assessment of alternatives.

The detuning between competitors now goes exactly in what promises they can make and fulfill, which are different from others. Take, for example, plastic windows. The product is one, but promises can be very different:

• Your home will become more comfortable.
• Your home will be safer.
• Your home will become brighter.
• You generally will not worry and waste time in the process of buying and operating.
• Your wife will be pleased with you.

Moreover, all these promises are interesting to completely different people, which must be taken into account when developing a marketing strategy for a business.

How to apply it?

It turns out that understanding that a business is selling (and a customer is buying) a promise affects many things in the web studio business. Thanks to this understanding, answers to old questions arise and new ones that did not exist before appear.

• A client came to me who wants a site. What should I offer him?
• We have problems during the completion of the project. What to do?
• What to look for when discussing a future project?
• Which positioning should I choose?
• What if in every project I have problems with a client?

We will definitely talk about these and other issues in our next articles.