 Hey everyone, my name is Rob. I work in marketing for Jetpack, Automatic, Akismet, WP Scan with lots of brands. I'm really excited to be back at WordCamp Atlanta. My first WordCamp was actually WordCamp Atlanta in 2019. I actually just started working at Automatic. It was my first week at Automatic and I wasn't even involved in WordPress before that. I learned about WordCamps. I looked it up and there was one down the street, so I actually rode my bike downtown and went to the last one in 2019. So I was excited to come back the next year and well, y'all know what happened. It's taken us four years to get back here, but here we are. So yeah, let's give it for the organizers. You persevered, got us back going again and I'm excited for the future. And thank you all for coming out and supporting us. So my talk today, like I said, is benefits, not features. How to speak human. And why did I pick this talk? Well on the surface, we all work for a company that sells a WordPress-related product or service or a freelancer that works with WordPress. And we can all improve the way we talk about our products or our services so that it better resonates with the people we're trying to reach. So I'll leave you today with some simple takeaways that you can go back, put them into action and talk about your products in a better way. But I do have an ulterior motive for being here today. So I've worked in WordPress marketing for almost five years now and I've seen a lot of really great messaging that shows off the power of WordPress, our plugins, our agencies, and it's contributed to the growth of WordPress for 20 years. I've also seen some messaging that's a bit muddled, unclear, and I think it's confusing and intimidating to people, to new people, trying to get into WordPress. There's a myth out there that's spread by some other people that WordPress is not for beginners. And I want to help fix that. And all of us can help fix that because we're not just selling our own product or service we're selling WordPress as a whole. We're ambassadors for WordPress. And the more we do that well together, we take someone from a closed platform and bring them into WordPress. And that's what's going to lead us to the next 20 years. All right. So I talk. People have problems. I see the art cracks me up on the slide. I recently got to go to a meetup in Malaga, Spain, and I went to the Picasso museum. And so I was putting together slides for this talk. And I was messing around with mid journey, which is the AI image creator. And so I was putting some of my art in with classic Spanish painters. So this is Picasso. You might see some Dalí or some Goya. That was fun. All right. So people have problems. We do. The good news is that they will pay you money to solve their problems for them because we have so many problems we can't solve them all ourselves. But you already knew that because that's why you started your business, your product, your service, whatever, because you found a problem people have. And you have a skill to solve their problem and take their money to solve their problem for them. So you've already done the hard work. You just need to find a way to better connect with people to get them to give you money. All right. So there's a famous business saying you might have heard. It's people don't want a quarter inch drill. What they really want is a quarter inch hole. And what this means is that people aren't inherently interested in your product just because it exists. It's just a means to an end to solve their real problem. I know it's hard for us to hear because we're in the weeds with our product every day. And it's all we can think about sometimes. But that's a product-centric mindset. We got to move to a customer-centric mindset because that's where, like, that's really all people care about. They're thinking about themselves. They're not thinking about us. And that's the foundation of product marketing is just thinking about the customer and what they want. So I've got a simple framework I'll show you that is a messaging framework about how I like to think about talking about our products. It's simple, see? This is one I put together for Kismet. I know this looks intimidating. Don't worry about reading it right now. In 15 minutes, you'll be able to make one of these something like it for yourself. It really helps you organize your thoughts. So I just wanted to show it as a scare you a little bit, but it's not that bad. All right. So let's back up. Talk about benefits and features. What's the difference? Features are what your product does. Here I have a fancy new iPhone, although I just realized today that AI hasn't figured out that the new iPhones, they don't have buttons anymore. So we could still be something. So just pretend it's a new iPhone. It's got a fancy camera. What is a camera? Well, it has 12 megapixel, 26 millimeter wide lens, 100% focus pixels, and auto image stabilization. What else it's got? Oh, yeah, F stop 1.5 aperture. I just read all that off the website. I don't really know what any of that means. But it sounds impressive. I'm impressed. All that means it takes pretty pictures. Okay, I like pretty pictures. That's good. But why do pretty pictures matter was really behind that. We don't want pretty pictures just for themselves. Alright, so let's imagine your kid is playing soccer, has a breakaway scores a goal, they're running fast, but you're able to make a crystal clear image and play it back later, send it to friends and family. Like the real benefit there is you're capturing the essence of being a parent. That's pretty good. You're sharing a moment with loved ones. Oh, okay, well, that's pretty powerful. I like that. That to me is a lot more interesting than listing all the features. And next one. So this is a benefit ladder. We start at the bottom and we want to climb to the top. The higher the top we get, the better the connection you'll make. So we start here with the bottom of target and insights. Who is your customer? What do they care about? What's your problem? Hopefully you know some of that already. If not, you have to come back another time because that's a different talk. So we climb up the product features. And that is the stuff we just talked about the iPhone 12, 12 megapixel 26 millimeters. Then we get to functional benefits. Okay, that means a pretty pictures sharing it easily. That's good stuff. That's where most people live sharing those functional benefits. But the top one, how does that make you feel when you have those pretty pictures and you share them? Proud, loving, nostalgic. That's powerful stuff. The higher you can climb if you can get to this level, you're creating a connection with the customer, maybe a repeat customer, maybe a brand advocate, someone's willing to talk about how awesome you are to other people. That's really great if you can get there. All right, one framework that I like that helps. It's just a really simple way to boil it down is called the jobs to be done framework. What this says is that there's people when they buy our product, they hire us, they hire our product, do a job. And if we do a good job, great, they'll hire us again. And if we do a crappy job, you're fired. So this boils it down into three lines. When I struggle, that is the customer's problem, need the solution, that's your product, so that I can benefit. And that's the reminder of what the end benefit is there. So it's pretty easy to do. You could probably fill one out right now for your own own product. I'm going to give you a little tip that I like. This word talking like a human comes in. So it's not just any kind of human. You want to talk like the humans that buy your product, and even better your best customers. Do you know who your best customers are? They're the people that spend the most money with you, that buy multiple times, the levy reviews that are an advocate to tell other people to use you too. That's really great. You want to talk to them and find out how they talk about your product. You might learn a lot what they like the most. But they'll also help you explain how to talk about your product to other people. All right, I have an example here. So for Kismet, I did an exercise where I went through our five star reviews, and I pulled out any phrase that I thought was interesting to me or compelling, and I just made a list of them. And here's a few examples. No learning curve. It just works. Never waste time. Every word press site needs this. No downsides. Set it and forget it. To me, this was really exciting because I could sit around thinking up messaging and copy all day, but these are people that really they like the product enough where they left to review themselves without me asking, and they came up with these words. That's a lot more interesting to me to use words like that. So using this, I came up and filled out this job to be done statement for Kismet. So when I need to eliminate spam comments on my site, that's the problem a lot of people have. I need a solution that just works. This speaks to the accuracy consistency. So I never waste time scanning comments again. So the surface benefit here is save time. Everyone wants to save time. But the underlying benefit there is people have, you run a small business. You have so many things asking for your time. You have so many different things to be doing. You don't have time for spam comments. You want to do you want to grow your business. You want to do anything else. That's really the underlying benefit there. Just take something off my plate. So I don't have to think about it. And I mentioned you could also use this for copy. This is a enterprise page we have. You notice the top line set it and forget it. I took that right from a customer review. That's it's great when someone can do my job for me a customer. And hopefully I can find more customers that look like them. Alright, so the name of the talk was benefits not features. I was a bit of an exaggeration because features they do matter too. The key is first make that emotional connection. And then once you've got them hooked a little bit, then you can talk about the features. Especially if some of your customers may be looking at other solutions on the internet, like some of your competitors. Which one do I pick? Well, this is where it is important to list out all the features. I like to have a feature page that goes into great detail of all the things you have. It's important to be concise at the top. But people if they see something on a competitors page and not on yours, they might think you don't have it even if you do. So it's important to list out everything you do. And if you're more detailed, it's important for SEO to give you a nice boost, the more content you have. One other thing I like to do is not just list the features, but also link them back to the benefit. So instead of saying your camera's 12 megapixel, 26 millimeter, say create memories that last a lifetime with the camera that has 12 megapixel, 26, et cetera. It can be, it can be helpful. All right. So going through that framework I showed you a quick peek at, we go through benefits features. Next is called reasons to believe. And here I have AI Rod Stewart singing, giving you a reason to believe. So reason to believe is there's a lot of people on the internet, everyone's saying stuff. You have your benefits and you claims, sounds great, but why should I believe you? How do I know you're not just some guy, some spammer, making up stuff to take my money? And so this is how you can give more credibility to what you're saying. So you think about it like in the Apple example, why do we believe Apple? Well, I mean, they've been creating innovative, delightful experiences for multiple decades. Like, of course we believe Apple, they can just say anything they want. And we're like, oh, yeah, I want that Apple. Unfortunately, we are not Apple. So we have to work a little harder to get them to believe us. With Kismet, I try and talk about the technology underlying and why, why it's impressive has 15 years of data. It works on millions of websites and it uses cloud-powered machine AI learning. I don't know. You have to think about what resonates if you were explaining someone why your product service is so good. How would you make them believe you? And that's the kind of language you want to use. Something simple you could do to get started that a lot of people do is a money-back guarantee. It's reassuring. It's kind of like putting your money where your mouth is and you're like, you don't believe me, I'll give you your money back. If you're just getting started and want more people to give you a try, it's something you could consider. All right. And the last one is your proof points. So you give people a reason to believe, but they're still the most stubborn, cynical people out there. Like, I want to see numbers, I want to see data. How are you going to prove that you can do, you can deliver on these claims you're making? And if you have real numbers, you can come up with real numbers, that's best. If you don't have numbers or it's like a service agency and maybe numbers doesn't really make sense. Customer case studies or success stories, that's really compelling. Like I said, find your best customer, tell their story. Why were they so happy? And then you'll maybe put it up and other someone that's on the fence reads that and say, why look like this person? So I think this solution will work for me. Give you some examples of what I've used. I pulled this off the Akismet website. Like I said, we're lucky enough to have 15 years of numbers, 546 billion, 365 million, 133,000, 567. That actually updates on the website. That's to me that's pretty compelling. It's such a huge number. 100 plus million websites, 99.99% spam detection. So yeah, be loud about your numbers that makes people feel reassured to use actual numbers. Or a case study. Here we work with ConvertKit, work with 428,000 creators to save them 20 hours a month. I know this has numbers too, but you could just tell the story about how they succeeded and even if it doesn't have numbers, it'll be compelling. All right, that's all the stuff I just talked about in that framework, the messaging framework. So now I'll walk through it a little slower. All right, so the benefits. Think about do that exercise. What are the main benefits why people use my product for kismet, save time, increase form conversion, improve site engagement. And then you have supporting features. So you'll notice these have some columns they kind of line up to those top ones. The first two go all the way across. I like to line up the feature with what the benefit it provides. So like I said the first two are blocking spam because that's really the foundation of the product. But the third one removing captures. I hate captures. They line up to increasing form conversion and improving site engagement. And why that's important is later when you're writing copy or writing an email or a web page about captures or forms, this handy chart will say like these are the main benefits here. This is really how you figure out talking about these features. Here's what I want to connect to. The next part with those reasons to believe you can talk about your why spam damages your website performance and help people understand why how spam is so bad or why kismet so good because cloud powered algorithmic etc. You'll find yours over time. And finally proof points. Those are those hard numbers I gave you trusted by number of sites spam comments blocked etc. And the last one, the very top now do it last because it's the primary message. So tying it all together if you could give one sentence to summarize what your product does why it's so great why it benefits people. This is that one summary sentence. You can use it to then this might be helpful for writing a headline on your on a web page. So there's the whole thing. This document for me is really important. It's a foundation of how I talk about a kismet. I share this with everybody at automatic and say like this is why automatic is good why a kismet is good. Especially if there's a sales team or other people that are talking about your product to make sure you're on the same page. And then you'll hear back from I hear from sales like well actually I've tried this one and that doesn't resonate with people I have a different benefit and it's really helpful for me because this is an evergreen document. I've been updating this for like three or four years now. I replace a benefit all the time it's more important put new features as they come out new data points. And then this is the first tool in my tool kit someone comes to me we need a new web page we need to send an email but what are we talking about. Well I have a benefit I want to talk about the features are underneath it. Reasons believe proof points it basically writes itself at that point I can turn something around in an hour because it's already been written. I'm just taking the guiding light here and turning into copy. Well that's it that is product marketing 101. It's really like I said about customer centric thinking understanding your customer and keep asking questions till you get to that end benefit. So I encourage you to go all out and give it a try. And let's all take word press to the next level. Cool that's it and have lots of time for questions if you have any. Sure. Yeah that's a good that's a good problem to have. So yes when we're creating content you probably did some maybe did some keyword research you think you're going to pull in and yeah and then you find out that other people are visiting well I guess if you had you had comments enabled then you might understand from other people asking questions. Yeah I guess if you're already doing do you think they would have additional questions that would need answering. Yeah I guess it's just trying to find out who who they are and like if there's a way to hopefully there's comments or some way to get in touch with them then you can find out who they are what they care about. That's like we actually did that with the kismet. We've kismet's always been a small small business since we're press found it was one of the first plugins and helping bloggers specifically keep the content there and we're just going through our customer list and finding out who are best customers and I found out Microsoft was using a kismet like why is Microsoft using a kismet don't you have some product and you know even like Facebook, YouTube, Google if they if people have figured out the spam problem then comments in YouTube wouldn't be such a disaster so yeah I was just asking questions and then we found out well there's like a whole enterprise level need for this product so yeah I don't know if I have anything specific other than try and ask try and ask questions and what do they care about and then you can find out maybe of a new market or tailor your next content towards those people. Yeah it's hard and I would say that automatic is not necessarily the best at deciding because we we try and be everything to everyone which is really hard to do same with Jetpack so I'd like to break it down that you were what you mentioned there about who is your best customer it's more of a strategic thing first like who do we really want to go after I try and pitch this if we lost every customer except one could our business like grow with this one customer and hopefully it's one with enough market opportunity that that it could and then rather than just spread myself then trying to be everything to everyone you could be really great at this one type of customer so like you said either your best customers look at that or if it's a really crowded area everyone's everyone's working on this customer no one's over here let me move over here that might be a reason to do it so yeah that's I try and look at I've been with Jetpack we had this problem and if any of you have been in the community a long time Jetpack hasn't always had the strongest name at WordCamps because it wasn't built for developers originally I mean it was but people that manage lots of site they want a simple plug-in that does one thing they don't want all of this stuff in one big plug-in that's that's really helpful for novices but not developers so that led that product strategy of we're breaking up Jetpack now I'm we're talking to developers and trying to change those perceptions because it's a different product so yeah it's really about like being aligned strategically getting everyone on point like who's the most important customer is and then the use cases it's easy from there talk to talk to people how do they use the product what are their problems list out the use for and that's where customer stories come in if you could have one strong one for every use case that would be that would be really helpful yeah well that's what I like to do is the thing you may have heard that Amazon does before I even usually developers are already in a way I have to jump in like do you know what you're building yet let's let's talk about it but I try and write the press release before the blog announcement blog post before they even start writing because imagine it goes like development goes awesome super fast and now we're ready to go shout about it like what is your dream situation and write the headline and like I solved this problem and I can do this that's when you're starting out it's the problem you're hoping to solve so that's what I'm usually going for and then if you're if you're able to do like customer interviews or beta testing like that's when you can dig in more about the specific person and this is resonate with you like did it solve your problem do you have a different problem and then you'll like slowly get that yeah that's I I try and do but you know if not you just figure as you go like that when I came in we hadn't done a lot of that stuff or maybe we had but I hadn't been documented in the same way so I was coming into a 10 year old product and ask like why do people use it and it's like well to block spam like okay but like beyond that and yeah so then we work on detailing out all the use cases and you can it's evergreen so you can prove it over time you're always getting better thank y'all for coming out