As an entrepreneur or small business owner, you may be tempted to list all of the features your product or service has on your website and social media pages. After all, you know that the more features you list, the more likely you are to attract potential customers! However, this isn’t necessarily true; in fact, listing your features can actually be detrimental to your marketing efforts by turning off potential customers instead of attracting them. To keep your prospects engaged with your business and boost sales, focus on benefits instead of features whenever possible.
What are benefits?
Benefits are the reasons why a customer would want to buy your product or service. A benefit is something that solves a problem, enhances their life, or is something they’re interested in. The key difference between features and benefits is that features describe what you’re selling while benefits tell the customer what your product can do for them.
When should you use features over benefits?
Features are often the first thing you think about when you’re creating your product. What does it do? How does it work? These questions all relate to features. But, the difference between a feature and a benefit is that a benefit focuses on what the product WILL DO for the consumer. It’s not about how the product works, but what it will do for them and how it will make them feel.
A feature, by definition, is a part or characteristic of something. By focusing too much on your product’s features, you’re missing out on an opportunity to sell what it can do for people. When you focus on benefits instead, you’ll be able to better connect with potential customers and sell more of your product.
Examples of feature-based copy vs benefit-based copy
Here are some examples of featured-based copy vs benefit-based copy.
For example, if you’re selling an office chair.
The features would be noted as: big, black, office chair with wheels.
Versus the benefits which would be written as: beautiful chair that goes with any office color, comfortable in any position, that moves easily around any office space.
A watch is another example.
The features are: square, black, digital watch with alarm.
The benefits: It’s got a lighted display so you can see it at night or in dark environments. It also comes with two (ear pleasant) alarms to help you wake up and its squared shape feels luxurious and comfortable on the hand.
Conclusion
Features do not always accurately represent what the customer needs from the product or service. In many cases, customers only care about benefits and how they will be impacted by your product or service.
So my advice to you is to use benefits to sell your product whenever possible. I hope you found this short article useful!
