Distinguishing the difference between features and benefits can be a challenge for many business owners and do-it-yourself copywriters and marketers.
But understanding the differences could drastically increase your sales. The features describes your product or service, while the benefits describes how the product or service can help your customers solve a problem.
Why people make purchases
When people are deciding to make a purchase, they need more than technical knowledge about a product’s specs. People buy things based on emotion, and then they rationalize the purchase with logic. This is the reason listing the features of a product or service is useless unless you can also get your customers to see a benefit they can appreciate.
What’s in it for me?
If you sell cars, a feature of your cars might be the aerodynamic, lightweight design. A benefit is that customers will save on gas – a big benefit in today’s economy.
No matter what you are selling, customers want to know “what’s-in-it-for-me?” Always make sure to back up the features of your product or service with clear benefits so they can clearly see why they should make the purchase.
marketing copy, marketing research, Allison Nazarian, marketing
