Why It Matters: Tell the Story Behind Product Specifications

Make a bigger impact in your marketing message with rich storytelling
Why It Matters: Tell the Story Behind Product Specifications
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When it comes to successful marketing, it bears repeating that a picture is worth 1,000 words. That piece of wisdom gets to the heart of what good marketing is all about, especially in the AV industry. Product specifications certainly matter because they are, after all, the nuts and bolts of any product innovation. But when it comes to creating messaging and connecting with the buyer or client, there’s a time and place for how and when they’re used in content marketing, especially in press releases.

 Product specifications on their own don’t capture the richness of what an audio, video, or technology component really does or the advantage. When marketing messages fail to spell out the innovation, it makes customers have to think hard or spend hours researching how that feature will benefit them. That includes any cost or labor perks when scaled to their projects. Take, for example, a plug-and-play conferencing mic with 360-degree coverage. That doesn’t sound half bad, right? Plug-and-play is a buzzy term that implies ease and 360-degree is a circle, so that must mean it picks up the voices gathered around it. But it doesn’t capture the full essence of what the problem is here, only the answer. And this is no time for Jeopardy!

In Donald Miller’s book, “Building a Story Brand,” he writes: “If we haven’t identified what our customer wants, what problem we are helping them solve, and what life will look like after they engage our products and services, for example, we can forget about thriving in the marketplace.” In other words, people need to relate to what you’re selling. They need to know that it will solve the problem they’re facing.  

Let’s go back to that microphone. I’m old enough to remember what it was like to walk into a meeting room and have to put up with poor audio and audio capture. The reason was because the meeting was being conducted on an office phone turned to the speakerphone mode (feel free to cringe). Twenty years ago, participants would have suffered through bad meetings because there were fewer meetings overall and most participants were in the room. But according to a report from the National Bureau of Economic Research, the number of meetings that employees need to attend has risen by 12.9% since the pandemic. Suffering through it isn’t an option anymore when there’s so much on the line: loss of productivity, increased cost, fatigue, job satisfaction, and more. 

Then there’s the integration side. As more people are in hybrid meetings, organizations now need more conferencing and collaboration spaces. What used to be one high-quality boardroom on the 12th floor is now numerous meeting spaces all demanding the same caliber of AV all spread throughout the building. Remember that 360-degrees of coverage feature? That doesn’t tell us anything about what it can do for an integrator, but there are benefits for them too if we dig deeper. With 360-coverage, what was used to be weeks of work fine-tuning the aim of microphone lobes to get as close to perfect as possible to pick up voices seated in a certain location now can be done in minutes. And depending on the strength of the microphone pick-up, theoretically participants can be anywhere in the room, or even move around — no lobe tuning required. Just plug it in and it’s mostly ready to go. Ah, now we see why plug-and-play is needed! Weeks of room commissioning — gone. And one integrator can get all the rooms done. It’s the perfect solution for meeting the today’s project scale challenges.

So in review: The job was large, but thanks to that mic’s features, the labor shrank while ensuring that, indeed, everyone in the room — no matter where they’re at — can be heard. It’s a win for meeting participants. It’s a win for integrators. Oh, and there’s onboard remote monitoring capabilities, allowing AV tech or IT staff to conveniently keep eyes on the mics right from their workstation. So it’s a win for AV tech or IT staff too, whose own work tasks have grown exponentially as more technology is installed throughout the building.

When products are dumbed down only to their features and specifications, the problem isn’t evident. There’s a gap in the message that requires the buyer to take a big leap of imagination and to rely on what might be very limited tech knownledge. By elaborating on the problem, the answer shines in a whole new light. What’s more, the decision to buy can be made with more much determination and speed. And that’s a powerful story.

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