DMN3 Blog

Do you ask it enough? In the philosophical context this question can help you reflect on life itself. But how does it impact your marketing decisions?

Let me show you what I mean. Today’s post deals with the last of three declarations I keep next to my computer. Click on the previous ones to go to those postings.

• Become my customer!
• What’s in it for me?
• So What?

So What?... is one of the most profound questions in Internet marketing or any other kind of marketing!

In many ways it is tied to the key question in every customer’s mind: "What’s in it for me?" But it also goes well beyond that to the business itself.

When planning an online marketing campaign or any other marketing campaign for that matter, this simple question can help you:

1. Translate product or service attributes into meaningful customer benefits and a value proposition
2. Focus on meaningful Internet marketing outcomes

Let me give a couple of examples from both our target audience perspective and our own business’ perspective.

Customer/target audience perspective

• They claim to have a good product... So What?
• They have been in business a hundred years... So What?
• They are open until 9:00 p.m... So What?
• They have offices in 50 cities... So What?
• Their gizmo processes data at the speed of light... So What?

Asking “So What?” in this customer context forces you to focus on benefits to the customer as opposed to product specifications or attributes. In the last post I discussed how you can take an attribute or specification and create a benefit. Used as part of a process to clearly define the benefits at the most base level, the "So What" exercise will take you to the emotional benefits that bring about sales.

"What's in it for me?" translates into "So What?" Potential customers should not have to spend time trying to figure out what's in it for them.

That means you should do it for them as part of your message development. What's in it for them is called a "BENEFIT." Translating attributes or specifications into benefits is a marketing 101. Yet, take a look at websites and other marketing campaigns on the Internet. How many of them are using benefits to market their services or products?  How many of them have honed their benefits to match the needs and desires of their target market? How many have addressed the emotional needs of their market?

One way to arrive there is the "So What?" question. Asking this question about each attribute or specification gets us to a specific benefit. Asking this question about each benefit can help us hone that benefit to the “best” benefit in the minds of our target market. Keep asking it until there is no other answer.

Benefit also works from the business’ perspective as well. “What’s in it for me?” is a question that business executives and marketing professionals should be asking of their marketing efforts using the “So What?” question. Let’s look at a couple of examples

Management & Marketer’s Perspective:

• Traffic to your website has increased 80%... So What?
• Your YouTube video has had 400,000 views... So What?
• Your website design has won creativity awards... So What?
• Your email marketing has an open rate of 30%... So What?
• You website is ranked number 3 on Google… So What?

This second viewpoint is important in the planning for online marketing campaigns. Asking the: “So What" question gets us to focus on the meaningful OUTCOMES of our efforts, rather than the marketing strategy itself. Internet marketing lends itself to tracking lots of outcomes, many of which do not contribute to achieving the business goals of the organization.

What is more important?

• Lots of traffic to a website - or getting less, but more qualified, traffic to a website?
• Lots of traffic to a website - or getting them to take a favored action once they get there?
• The click-through-rate or the conversion rate of keywords or Pay-per-Click?
• A good website or lots of traffic?
• High search engine rankings - or more sales?

I hope you now understand why "So What?" is one of my favorite questions in the world of Internet marketing.