Time and money are both commodities subject to ever-increasing demand and ever-decreasing supply. If you can save a customer time or money (or perhaps both), your product or service will be perceived as having increased value. In fact, many financially-stressed consumers (particularly start-up enterprises and growing companies) will actually pay a premium in order to buy a product or a service where one can simply "Set It And Forget It." We want things done automatically -- preferably while we sleep or do other work.
Ironically, if you can demonstrate how time (technically) is saved by your innovation, and how much time can be saved by using it, consumers and businesses will dig deeper into shallower pockets in order to pay a bit extra at the prospect of eliminating work hours, attention and record-keeping, or taking on a contractor or employee. And everyone is too busy to do anything manually -- its an economic and a cultural phenomenon that is trending positively and rapidly.
The messaging proposition in marketing is three-fold: 1) Remind the prospect that life is becoming more and more hectic, and how precious every moment of it is; and 2) repeating the song of "time is money"..."your time is precious"... and 3) Coming up with some statistical or anecdotal support about how "this INVENTION will save this much time, which is equivalent [this part is tricky and subjective] to saving you this much money, which represents a tremendous ROI (Return On Investment).
This is especially true when the process being addressed (the "problem being solved," or the "pain being relieved") is very repetitive, uninteresting and time-consuming if done traditionally or manually. Our audience is in search (always) of a panacea. And they are always flattered to hear how valuable their time is.
Lastly, the finishing touch to truly drive this message home, after you have opened with" It's fully-automated: Set It And Forget It!" is to talk about how money buys you less and less "nowadays" [in advertising, it is always "nowadays"], making your unique product or service an even greater bargain.
My confession: I have purchased many a program or device because I simply couldn't bear the thought of spending hours upon hours of my week, at NO WAGE (I am a terrible employer, and I would quit working for myself if I could), doing something repetitive, boring and s-l-o-w.
Douglas E Castle [http://aboutDouglasCastle.blogspot.com]
p.s. Think of all of the automated social media posting, updating, timing, bookmarking, listing, SEO and other apps which are wildly popular (my favorites being TweetAdder and Pingler). They sell because people don't have as much time to invest in getting rich.
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