Indirect Benefits of Your Offer
An indirect benefit is where a third-party benefits as well as or instead of your client or customer. There are also incidental benefits your client or customer experiences beyond what you originally planned.
Referral Marketing
Referral marketing is a deliberate approach to indirect benefits. You have an offer that will benefit your customers. If a business partner refers your service to one of their customers, your partner will benefit from what their customer receives from you. All three parties win from this approach.
A good example of this approach is Utility Warehouse (this is an affiliate link, included to illustrate this post. Contact me if you are interested). They offer an attractive package of discounted utility services. They use referral marketing to sell their packages, which means they engage distributors, who are self-employed. So, let’s see who wins.
- The customer receives discounted utilities. They save money by joining. It is quite difficult not to save money with this scheme. Note this is unlike most sales where the customer parts with money!
- The distributor receives various benefits from making a sale. These are generous although the work still has to be done to sell the package.
- Utility Warehouse makes profits that go to its shareholders. It also employs a large number of people who support the distributors and they clearly benefit too!
This is an interesting business model and it is worth studying to understand the power of indirect benefits. When you have a win-win arrangement, it changes the basis of doing business. Distributors benefit directly from collaboration. There is an incentive to generosity built into this approach.
That’s true for any form of referral marketing. The mindset has to be one of generosity and not competition. This does not guarantee everything boles along swimmingly! This approach requires a lot of patience and very often the benefits are not immediately clear. You have to trust other businesses will in the long run act in your interests.
Causes
Of course, causes are examples of where a third-party benefits, often at the expense of the client or customer. Perhaps we don’t always think of people who make donations as clients or customers, after all they do not usually receive any direct benefit from their contribution.
However, just as businesses value repeat customers, so charities value repeat donors. This means they need to build a relationship with their donors. Whist the donor will expect as much of their contribution as possible to help the beneficiaries of the scheme, many will value reports on the effectiveness of the cause and possibly other incentives to continue with their support.
If the donor feels they are part of something, they are more likely to continue with their support. The same applies to any customer, if they feel as if they are part of something they are more likely to agree to work with you or shop with you. Maybe it is not obvious how you will do this but it is always worth asking the question.
Other Benefits to the Prospect
It’s always worth asking what benefits your customer or clients receive in addition to their main reason for buying. Often these positive side effects can be more important than the thing itself.
So, someone might purchase double-glazing to reduce their fuel bills. Double-glazing also reduces carbon emissions and this side-effect might be of value to the customer. If they approach you to reduce their fuel bills, there’s no harm in pointing out other benefits.
It is always helpful to listen to your customers and ask how your product or service has benefitted them. It is not impossible they will experience benefits you never anticipated. These may be universal enough to add to your marketing copy.
It is worth reviewing possible side-effects as you develop your product or service. These might accrue to family life, working life or directly to the customer.
The Context of Indirect Benefits
It’s not really possible to review each of these because so much depends upon the nature of the offer. However, it is worthwhile being aware of the circumstances in which indirect benefits might arise:
- Customers find secondary uses for your offer. This is fairly common with technology. People often work out new uses, never contemplated by the manufacturer and will share those uses with others. Utility Warehouse issue a cashback card which generates savings on things purchased from certain High Street businesses. The card can also be used to finance your children, so you can top it up if they are stranded and need to buy tickets. This is not its primary purpose and will not usually generate cashback but it is a use people have discovered for themselves.
- Improvements in one area of life can lead to improvements in others. So, stress reduction at work is likely to lead to improved relationships at home. We tend to compartmentalise our lives and very often we don’t think about how changes in one arena might trigger change in another.
- Anything that saves time, money or other resources is likely to have a knock-on effect. The point is not so much the savings themselves as the benefits making those savings will have. People don’t always opt for savings if they involve making an effort. To make the effort worthwhile, it may be helpful to point out other benefits of making those savings. Never underestimate the power of routine in most peoples’ lives. Yes, of course, many people change their routines every day but they need a real incentive to do it.
Can you think of additional benefits you’ve found for your offer? Have you used these to support your marketing?