Posted by: Michel Fortin
June 30, 2009
Issue #704

The Oft-Confused Features And Benefits

Theodore Levitt once said, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill, they want a quarter-inch hole.”

This is one of the most quoted passages in marketing in trying to explain the difference between features and benefits. However, the quote is incomplete and leaving out something that, to me, is far more important.

And that is, what’s the purpose of this quarter-inch hole? What does the reader plan on doing with it? Even better, what’s the end-result the reader wants to achieve with it?

The answer to that question is, in my estimation, the real benefit. The ultimate benefit.

Not the hole. And certainly not the drill that created it.

Sure, it is a benefit to some degree. But “benefit,” defined in the dictionary, is “something that improves, enhances, or promotes well-being.” So let me ask you, how is one or one’s well-being enhanced by a quarter-inch hole?

To make offers truly irresistible, words should appeal to specific buyer motives. Common copywriting wisdom dictates that the first rule in doing so is to stress benefits over features. Think benefits, benefits, benefits. Sounds simple, right?

Not really. For if it were, a website would be successful simply if it listed a product’s features and its subsequent benefits. And we all know that is not true. Many benefit-laden copy have failed. So you need more than that.

In an attempt to provide you with some guidance on how to dig deeper to find better, more compelling benefits, here’s a tool I’ve used to help you.

The Product Analysis Worksheet

One of the classes I used to to teach in college was Professional Selling. In it, the curriculum’s textbook was Personal Selling: An Interactive Approach by Ronald Marks, Ph.D., a professor of marketing at the University of Missouri.

In this book, Dr. Marks discusses the ability to convey benefits over features using a tool he calls Product Analysis Worksheet. The way it works is quite simple.

Product benefits usually consist of four principal levels. They are features, advantages, motives, and benefits. Each layer has its own set of attributes and characteristics, which varies depending on the product type and the market to which the product caters.

To illustrate, here’s a description of each layer:

1. Features – what products have. For example, say you sell an accounting software. You can say, “This accounting software has a reporting feature.”
2. Advantages – what features do. To continue our example, “Reporting provides real-time, on-demand, updated mission-critical information to key personnel.”
3. Motives – what motives do features satisfy. For example, “Cost-savings, greater control, increased production, better decisions, etc.”
4. Benefits – what those features mean. This is where you attach the advantages you outlined to specific motives those features satisfy. To continue our example…

   “With this powerful reporting feature, managers are able to keep their finger on your company’s financial pulse at all times, thereby reducing costs by as much as 50%, maintaining greater control over expenditures, increasing their output by 10-20 times at any given time, and avoiding making decisions that could cost them thousands if not millions of dollars – all in just a few clicks.”

What does this do? By digging deeper and communicating what benefits really mean to your audience, it adds weight, purpose, meaning, relevancy, and power behind the benefits you initially come up with. It gives your benefits legs.

Obviously, coming up with a list of benefits may be easy if you know your product well enough. But describing them in a way that’s appropriate for, and directly related and targeted to, specific audiences is not an easy process.

Market research helps to solve that challenge. In fact, researching your market before you put pen to paper or electron to screen is the most important component of good copywriting. Not the headline, not the offer, and not the price.

The market.

The market is the single most important component of your sales copy. The more you learn about your market, the better and more effective your copy will be.

For example, a common problem among marketers is to develop content using a language their readers will understand. Sure, readers may understand what’s being said to some degree. But comprehension of a message doesn’t mean they will relate to it.

The problem is, marketers often use words that only they can relate to.

This is quite normal as we write in the way we think or talk.

However, the goal in writing good, compelling copy is to think like our readers, talk like our readers, and connect with our readers. This is where much of the copy I see fails.

Even yours truly is guilty of this from time to time. We’re too married to our product, or we’re too disconnected from how and what our readers think, feel, and communicate. This is where the “product analysis worksheet” can become very helpful.

Here’s how it works…

First, list all of the features of your product or service, including standard, technical, supportive, even abstract features. Then, with each feature, develop a subsequent list of relative advantages. Write down what each feature listed does.

Some people think that what a feature does is the benefit. But this is where most business owners and copywriters fail to relate those benefits to their readers.

They assume an advantage is a benefit and stop there, when those benefits are too broad or one-sided. Instead, the feature’s function or purpose, not how it actually serves, relates to, and benefits the reader, is merely an advantage.

While a feature is what a product has and an advantage is what that feature does…

… A Benefit is What That Feature Means.

A benefit is what a person intimately gains from a specific feature. It’s the ultimate end-result. When you describe a feature, say this: “What this means to you, Mr. Prospect, is this…” Followed by a more personal gain your reader gets from the feature.

Turn it around. don’t focus on a certain feature’s benefit. Rather, focus on how those features specifically benefit the individual and what those benefits truly mean.

Here’s an example using my private membership website, where members get access to videos of me tearing sales copy apart, and revealing copywriting tips, tricks, and actual, tested conversion strategies in the process.

• Feature: Watch a top copywriter in action as he writes killer copy, all recorded on video, using real salesletters and real websites from real clients.
• Advantage: You get to learn how to write copy faster by understanding the logic behind successful copy (not just how to write it), and also learn copywriting tips, mistakes, shortcuts, and proven split-test results in the process.
• Motive: What you want is to reduce the learning curve, risks, effort, and costs involved in trying to do it all yourself. Therefore, what this feature means is this…
• Benefit #1: This means you get real-world examples from real case studies and actually see the process done before you, instead of plain textbook theory or mere swipe files that leave you scratching your head.
• Benefit #2: Using real-world examples means you can understand what goes into world-class copy and appreciate how they’re being used, so you can easily repeat the process on your own, in the future.
• Benefit #3: Repeating the process on your own means you don’t have to pay an expensive copywriter to write it for you or fix it if it’s not performing well.
• Benefit #4: Not having to pay for a copywriter means you save money and get it done faster by learning proven strategies you can apply immediately, without waiting for someone to do it for you or explain it to you in some “how-to” course.
• Benefit #5: And learning proven, tested strategies means you eliminate the need to search for, find, test, and learn everything yourself, and avoid making costly mistakes by having to figure out what works and what doesn’t on your own.

… And on and on.

Can You See The Difference?

Now, once achieved, look at your worksheet.

Did you cover all the benefits that a specific feature has? Did you go deep and specific enough? Don’t just resort to apparent or obvious benefits. Dig deeper. Think of the end-results your readers get from enjoying your product or service.

Coming up with the first batch will be easy because they will be at the top of your mind. But forcing yourself to dig deeper and come up with stronger, more intimate benefits, although it will be more challenging, will provide you with some of the best ones.

To help you, here’s a simple exercise.

Once you’ve listed one benefit tied to a specific feature, just keep asking, “What this means to you is this…” And work it until you run out of reasons.

Or use what copywriter Peter Stone calls the “so that” technique. Same idea, but add the words “so that” at the end, like, “With this feature, you get [benefit], so that [deeper benefit], so that [even deeper benefit],” and so on until you can’t go any further.

Once you’re done, you then move onto the next feature.

Remember that features tell but benefits sell.

Above all, make sure you communicate those benefits in a way that truly reflects and caters to the situations, problems, needs, and desires of your target market. Express benefits in terms that relate directly to each individual in that market.

Some people shy away from describing benefits because they assume they generate hype or puffery. Not so. As illustrated above, they are effective tools to get your readers to fully understand and appreciate your product’s true purpose, meaning, and relevancy.

After all, different words mean different things to different people.

In other words, forget features and what they do, which is what most people think are benefits. Think of what a feature means to the customer and the words that communicate this meaning at an individual, intimate, and emotional level.

Because the more intimate your benefits are, the more real, vivid, significant, and meaningful they will be. And subsequently, the more sales you will generate, too.

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7 Comments »

1. Comment by Sarah clachar — June 30, 2009 @ 3:37 pm

   Excellent discussion, Michel - thank you.

   It’s so helpful to find more ways to push yourself further in zeroing in on what really will resonate with your prospect. I greatly appreciate the comment, too, of how important it is to check yourself - Are you really speaking in your prospect’s language or just how you feel comfortable speaking.

   I’m going to hold on to this essay.

2. Comment by Michel Fortin — June 30, 2009 @ 3:48 pm

   You’re very welcome, Sarah. And thank *YOU*.

3. Comment by Durga Walker — June 30, 2009 @ 4:27 pm

   Michael, I’m studying copywriting as we speak and am in the process of applying this product analysis to my lesson project. Thank you! It’s clarifying my thoughts and I finally have a clearer understanding of the layers. I could see the different aspects but just didn’t know how to sort them out. This was excellent and helpful. Many thanks.

   Durga

4. Comment by Cathy Chapman — June 30, 2009 @ 5:04 pm

   I had learned the “so what” technique through my studies at AWAI.

   Your Features, Advantages, Motives (I really like this one) and Benefits gives me more clarity.

   I have now made a worksheet that I will use in my copywriting to get to the “real” benefits.

   Thank you so much, Michel.

5. Comment by Paul Simister — July 1, 2009 @ 2:32 am

   Michel

   Thank you for clarifying this.

   So often I see examples of trying to turn features into benefits stop at the advantages level and I know I have been guilty of it myself.

   I can’t argue against the importance of the benefits since it answers the WIIFM test.

   But I would like to jump in to defend the humble feature.

   Your article is not as guilty of this as many I read on the features and benefits debate which seem to give the feature a bad name.

   But a feature gives a benefit substance and keeps the positive “this is how you will benefit” out the over the top hype.

   If benefits answer the “what do I get - what is my end result” question then features help explain the how.

   Going back to the drill example, if one of the advantages is a longer lasting drill and the benefit means that you can keep drilling consistent quality holes for longer with the inconvenience, delays and extra cost of replacement bits…

   the the feature of a tungsten tipped, specially heat treated carbon steel drill bit gives the benefit credibility and helps to explain why its different.

   I do feel that this importance of features is overlooked in the rush to explain benefits.

   After the classic Schlitz Beer story was based on the credibility of explaining the features of the process which created the purity of the beer.

   Long live, features, advantages, motives and benefits.

6. Comment by I.A. — July 1, 2009 @ 1:13 pm

   Printed this out…

   Classic!

7. Comment by Dean Kennedy — July 2, 2009 @ 8:31 pm

   Great insights Michel.

   I’ve also always used this example in a different way. People don’t want the drill … or the hole … they want the feeling of pride that they show off the picture on the wall they hung themselves, or their partner won’t nag them next weekend and they can sit back and relax … and you’ve explained that really well here.

   The best way I learned to do that was from a Tony Robbins sales mastery course. Taking the feature … and saying “what this means to you is …” and creating the benefit … and then saying “what this really means to you is …” and finding the emotions and, as you describe, the ultimate benefits.

   I find these questions help me expand a feature quite easily, and especially keep it in the perspective of the customer.

   As you’ve pointed out, it’s a great distinction from the regular features vs benefits observations.