When crafting B2B messaging, what is your approach for mixing functional vs emotional benefits and why?

First, let’s start with the following premise: Behavioral science tells us that the vast majority of decisions are made using emotional factors (Customer Brand Preference and Decisions: Gallup's 70/30 Principle, 2022), even when decision-makers think they’re making data-driven, rational decisions. Oftentimes, data is used after someone has made up their mind in order to justify their decision (often unwittingly). 

So I believe firmly in appealing to emotional benefits. It’s why we often refer to users’ problems as their “pain points” (which more strongly implies an emotion vs. just a “problem” or “challenge”). That said, there ought to be a 1:1 mapping between emotional pain → functional benefit to alleviate the pain → emotional benefits. In other words, “you’re probably frustrated by having to do X, which is why we’ve built capability Y to make you 10% more productive, so you can spend less time on toilsome work and get back to doing what you love.”

Another way to think about this is Simon Sinek’s Start with why, where he says that if you want to motivate someone to change a behavior (in our case, buy or use our product), you have to demonstrate why they should do it before you tell them how to do it, or even what you want them to do.

At the end of the day, you’re marketing to and selling to people, not personas. People have emotions. People don’t want to be more productive for the sake of being more productive, they want to be more productive to be better at their job so they can get promoted.

Emotional benefits are just as important as functional benefits. At Mutiny, one of the messages we’re experimenting with is “marketing that sales will love.” This is both functional (we’re enabling marketers to create something of value for sales) and emotional (as people, we all want others to like and appreciate our work).

Instead of thinking of this as functional vs emotional benefits, try to think about how you can complement functional benefits with emotional benefits—and in some cases, the two may actually be the same.