On “Selling the Benefits” with Conference Booths…

One of the great cliches of marketing is “Sell the benefits, not the features.” The problem is, when you take this too far, then no one knows what you do.

I’m at a Gartner conference, and walking around the vendor floor is just confusing. Everyone is “selling their benefits” so well that I have no idea what people actually do. Everyone is “revolutionizing work” and “ending digital workplace problems,” which is great, but give me SOME hint to HOW you plan to do that. Seriously, anything.

One booth just says, “No more headaches” and their name is just a jumble of letters. …wut? Are you a pain reliever? (They’re right across from us. I’m told no one has stopped by their booth for the entire conference.)

Half these companies could be therapists or counselors, for all the general goodwill they’re promising. At the end of the day, every product promises to make your life better in some way. So, we should all just put “making your life better” on our booths and call it a day, I guess.

I like our booth. It says “digital workplace” and “intranet” and even our company name, Staffbase, at least gives some clue to what we do. We have benefits, sure, but we’ll at least give you an idea up front of how we can help.