Maybe it’s even 17 reasons. It doesn’t really matter. Because no one cares.
When you’re at reason #7, we don’t even recall #2 anymore.
The more relevant question to ask is what’s the real reason a customer would choose you.
Part of the brilliance of Apple’s “I’m a Mac” campaign was that they made that exact shift from a plethora of good reasons to one real reason.
Make no mistake, each of the 323 spots that had been shot for the campaign focused on one of those good reason for why a Mac would be better than a PC (66 of those actually aired, source).
But they were not about the good reasons.
For one, I’m sure for each of those you can find people willing to dive into a heated discussion about whether that reason would even be valid.
Apple skipped that discussion and went straight into an argument about the real reason: Mac users are cool while PC users are not.
When you resonate with that message (which you might not, I know a lot of cool PC guys), the beauty of that approach is that the good reasons are all there.
This is the crucial aspect: The good reasons are never the problem. If you’ve done a great job and built something that’s actually amazing, you’re always going to have enough good reasons on your side (if you don’t, it’s probably better to fix your product before you fix your communication).
But any of these good reasons will always be considered in light of the real reason that makes us choose one product over another.
If you ignore this and instead only focus on the good reasons, even 66 good reasons won’t be enough to convince your audience.
Finally, if you need 66 reasons, or even just a dozen, to tell me why you are the superior choice, you’re devaluing the weight of each one of those reasons. Give me one heavyweight reason and we’re playing a totally different game.
What’s the real reason people choose you?
