Why do people continue to harp on the difference between features and benefits? Enough already. Wait. Except for the fact that it’s annoying to hear the reasons to use benefits rather than features all the time, these discussions actually tend to hammer home the point that most businesses miss. No one cares how long you’ve been at your current location or how many employees you have as individual facts standing on their own. They want to know WHY that matters to them: in other words, turn your features (how long you’ve been in the community, how many employees you have) into benefits (we’re locally owned and always available to serve you or our employees stick with us for the long-term in order to offer you a better customer service experience). See what I mean? Let’s look at this more seriously.
1. Tangible benefits. These are benefits that are universal (profits, savings, better value for their money, or more time to relax) or significant as symbols (the best tires for their money, the coveted printer that prints color and black and white and is faster than any they’ve seen before) as well as unique and exclusive (a green way to heat and cool your home, save 45 percent on energy bills with our windows).
2. Career or task benefits. These are benefits that can help your client’s jobs (or even homes) easier or more streamlined. This is primarily a business-to-business benefit, but think about this angle when finding out the benefits your company can offer. Does your custom paper invitation company offer corporate items? Can you come to a client’s place of work to wash their car in the corporate parking lot?
3. Ego benefits. These enhance a person’s self-worth, accomplishment, and achievement. If you sell hair care products, focus on how healthy and beautiful people would like their hair to look. If you sell mobile phone packages, think about whether or not your customers want to carry phones with customized colors. Why not offer any color a customer wants? What about custom shading in order to mix two colors together?
4. Personality benefits. These are benefits that are inspired by a certain type of person, so consider your audience and their mindset. Thinkers need lots of data, skeptics need lots of credibility, unemotional people need rationality, and emotional people need enthusiasm and energy.
5. Group benefits. Group-oriented audiences need to find out "what’s in it for them" as a whole. Sometimes an appeal to what connects multiple clients may be what they’re looking for. If you sell math software to students struggling with math, appeal to their need as a group to not be classified as just readers, or for a group of folks who ski, point out that every skier in your state enjoys a weekend at your ski lodge.
Benefits take a bit more energy to pull out of your typical features list, but it’s worth it. Just ask the ever-present question: "What’s in it for me?" from the point of view of your audience.
