Features Matter Too. Here’s Why and When You Should Use Features and Benefits.
I’m sure you’ve read marketing articles on the internet. And if you have, you probably notice the one rule good marketers and copywriters stress on: benefits.
Why you should focus on benefits over features?
Features focus on the business, and what your product or service does. Benefits focus on the customer, and how they “benefit” from using the product or service. Do you see the difference between the two statements?
If you want to attract more customers, you should understand how your product or service benefits your target customer. Benefits are important to good writing and advertising.
CPG (consumer packaged goods) brand Dollar Shave Club shows the way with their viral video used by the founder to generate buzz. Compare their script to a commercial by Gillette in the same year.
Dollar Shave Club highlights their product benefits, their unique sense of humor, and a clear focus on their target user. It’s actually a masterclass in copywriting and advertising in the modern age.
They not only show their benefits, but it’s clear that they pinpoint their customer’s pain in the process. The biggest benefit to their customer? Convenience.
What are Fake Benefits?
There is such a thing. I’ve seen it. I’ve read it. I’ve even seen it work.
As writers, it’s not easy to uncover the benefits of specific products or services. And sometimes, what should be a clear benefit is actually a false positive.
What do I mean?
Take this headline example: “Improve your hip motion rapidly.”
Sure, this looks like a great benefit. Wouldn’t you like to improve your hip motion? Really?
Does the statement above actually provide a true benefit? When was the last time you thought to yourself — I’d really love to improve my hip motion today?
Those statements are highly improbable and are the type of statements you don’t want to make if you are trying to persuade a prospect.
What do real benefits actually look like?
Real benefits come with information and promises that solve what people actually struggle with.
One way to know if you’re selling true benefits is to ask yourself — how universal your problem is and what do people really think about those problems?
Hubspot, a content marketing platform, provides a great example from their own research of a feature-turned-benefit.
Here’s their example here:
Feature: “Our platform automatically records your meetings. The editing tools make it easy to remove background noise, clip unnecessary sections, and flag key sections of the recording. Once you’ve finished editing, you can send the file to all the meeting attendees with one click.”
Benefit: “You’ve mentioned how much time you spend after every meeting writing a summary for your stakeholders. With our platform, you can get almost all that time back. Every meeting is recorded. You can send the audio file as is, or easily clean it up, cut it down, or call out important sections, with our editing tools. The entire process will take 5 minutes rather than half an hour.”
See the difference? Can you see the true benefit in the second statement?
I’ll help you out.
✔ Save time.
✔ Easy to share or edit.
✔ Quick.
Now those are actual benefits to a product.
Here are a few more features vs benefits examples to analyze:
- The product: Copywriting
- The feature: Search engine optimized content.
- The benefit: Website content that appeals to the search engines.
- The message: Get found by your customers and avoid expensive advertising fees with SEO copy that tops the rankings.
- The product: Baby gifts
- The feature: Hand-painted personalized piggy bank.
- The benefit: A one-of-a-kind gift for a baby.
- The message: Bringing a new life into the world is an event like no other — mark this occasion with a uniquely personal gift that will last a lifetime.
- The product: Baby gifts
- The feature: Hand-painted personalized piggy bank.
- The benefit: A one-of-a-kind gift for a baby.
- The message: Bringing a new life into the world is an event like no other — mark this occasion with a uniquely personal gift that will last a lifetime.
Can you see the difference for each product? What do you think about the message?
Extracting Real Benefits.
There’s only one sure-fire way to extract benefits. And that’s to understand your product or service inside and out. You should know what your product can do and how it works.
I know. It doesn’t help to just state that you need to know your product. So let’s go through this one step at a time.
How do you start extracting real benefits?
- Make a list of the features of your product or service. Make it as exhaustive as you can. The more the merrier.
- Question the importance of every feature. Ask yourself WHY each feature is important to the product or service.
- Dig deeper into the product or service and ask HOW this feature is important to a prospect or a client and their desires.
- Ask yourself what’s in it for the prospect at the base emotional level. Why should they care about this feature and how does it truly benefit their livelihood?
Remember, people buy products by making an emotional decision. They then justify it with logic.
Let’s run through a simple exercise. Think about a product or service you have.
You can use the example of an actual writing app called Persado if you’re having a hard time:
The feature: an artificial intelligence algorithm to generate words.
Why it exists: to add greater ability to generate the right words given a person’s current language, tone, and voice.
What’s in it for them: the ease of writing an email or ad-based on a few keywords and their database.
The emotional root: save time when you’re tired or too busy by replying to loads of daily emails or writing new ads for your marketing campaigns. It saves you stress in the process.
The above information takes a structured approach to ask the key questions about the product or service. It moves from focusing on the feature to the root of why someone would want to use this product or service.
I’m sure you’ve noticed a similarity between this example and the others above. These 4 questions above help you write the best message to address the benefits and pain points.
Take the time to run through this similar exercise with your product or service and the features included. It’s often a great exercise I take customers through to help them see their product in a customer-focused way.
When features work better than benefits.
Not every customer is the same. People are diverse. Now, I don’t want to dive too deep down the rabbit hole of consumer psychology. Firstly, I’m not qualified in that area. Secondly, it’s far too complex and would take another guide to cover that.
However, there are customers who prize features as much as or even more so than benefits.
If you’ve worked in B2B or have clients who are enterprise customers serving other businesses, you’ll have an idea about what I’m talking about. If you’re selling to technical or business people, it pays to highlight features.
The main reason why business people are more feature-focused is that they are actually looking for a solution. Their motive is not driven by want or desire, but by need. They aren’t buying based on emotion.
If your feature is well-known or a great fit for the problem they are trying to solve, you don’t need to hammer home benefits at the emotional level. You can simply paint a picture that it works, and works well.
But don’t let the above notion guide you to think you don’t need to highlight what it can do for them. You still need to paint that picture in their head, especially if you have a technical product. There’s still that 4-step (the above questioning) process you’ll need to go through. What does this tool or solution do for them and how it works?
The better you can paint the picture of how your tool, product or service helps their bottom line, the higher the chance to close the sale.
Make sure to include how the features actually get their business the promised results. Again, the proof is important to let them know your product or service is worth their time, effort and attention. No matter what, you’re still selling to a human being — one with emotions, fears, and hopes.
You don’t need to choose between features and benefits.
I’m not saying that you need to make a choice between highlighting features and benefits. You can always use both to present and perfect your ads or sale.
Remember, no matter the business or company, we are people. And you’re selling to a person — one not completely ruled by logic.
