Telling vs. Showing

It’s easy to use your content to tell your audience about how you can help them. 

But it’s much more powerful to show them. 

Here are 3 tips about how and why. 

Tip # 1 – Features + Benefits Don’t Sell

Features and benefits are nice, but they don’t mean anything if your target audience doesn’t understand how those features and benefits help them. 

Rather than talk about features and benefits, use your content to demonstrate them in action and the potential outcome. 

You can do this through customer success stories (aka case studies), testimonials, infographics, blog posts, etc.

Tip #2 – Tap Into Emotions

When we make purchases, we are driven by emotions: desire, fulfillment, FOMO. 

Telling your audience about certain features does nothing from an emotional standpoint because they don’t have any skin in the game. 

Their response is, “So what?”

But when your content demonstrates the outcome your product or service helps your audience achieve, you tap into their emotions. You help them see themselves with your product or service.

And that’s what you want.

Tip #3 – “Yes And”

Here’s a hint to keep in mind to help you show rather than tell:

If you find yourself thinking and writing about your features and benefits, say to yourself, “Yes and.” 

This will help you narrow down your thought and make it as relevant as possible to your audience. 

Let’s say you own a dog grooming business and are creating website copy for the home page of your website. You have five groomers who work for you and have been in the same location for 15 years.

Here’s your possible thought process. 

We make your dog look and smell beautiful. 

Yes and. 

We only use hypo-allergenic products. 

Yes and. 

Together, our groomers have over 50 years of experience. 

Yes and. 

We know dogs. 

Yes and. 

We love dogs and take care of every dog we groom as if they were our own. Not only are they safe in our hands, but dare we say they have almost as much fun as we do? They will leave looking and smelling their best, and they – and you – will be excited for their next grooming.

It’s a rudimentary example but hopefully, you get the idea.

If you are used to telling rather than showing, flip the script and start to show rather than tell. 

Need some help? Feel free to reach out, and let’s do it. 

And if you have a topic you’d like to see broken down into 3 Tips, let me know
Written by Wendy Jacobson of Incredible Content.

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