Is It A Benefit Or A Feature?

Aug 11 2008

Published by Dany at 6:06 am under Marketing

Can You Tell Who Is The Benefit and Who Is The Feature?

Everyone has heard that you should emphasize benefits not features. For some products, this is a fairly straight forward dichotomy:

Feature: Airbags
Benefit: Survive the crash

Feature: Blu-Ray Compatible DVD Player
Benefit: It’s like being in a theater!

Feature: Factory installed Windows Vista
Benefit: Absolutely none

You get the idea.

But with tech products, how to videos, and information products, it can sometimes be hard to separate benefits from features. You’ll hear many a gadget lover insist that the features are the benefits. Don’t believe them. Even for the most hard core gear head, features are just features.

4 GB of RAM on a blazingly fast quad core PC is a feature, no matter what your geeky friends say. The benefit is that all their geeky friends are green with envy. They are now, if only fleetingly, supercool. Or, if they are above all that, the benefit is that they can work more productively and efficiently. (Riiigghttt…)

And I Care Why?

A feature answers the question: what is it? how many? how does it work? who made it? Sort of like the reporter’s who, what, when, where, why questions. It is a verifiable fact that may appeal to some, but not all, buyers. By itself, a feature will not close the sale. (Similar products have similar features. How do you decide which to buy?)

A benefit, however, answers the questions, “So what?” A benefit tells you what’s in it for me. Why should a buyer care about your energy efficient washer-dryer? What’s the good of having 27 blades on one razor? A benefit whispers in your ear, “Do you want to be hot or not?” while a features says, “Really, this is a very practical purchase.”

Drill Down To The Simplest Level

If you are unsure whether you are extolling your product’s features or its benefits, after every bullet point, ask yourself, “Why should I care?” If you can answer, “Because…” the because will be the benefit.

Then, again ask, “So?” You’ll be surprised by how often you can find deeper and more appealing benefits.

When at last you have a list of benefits that a child could understand, you are ready to write your copy.