This is a well written and definitely enlightening guest post from Karol K. You can read more about him at the end of the post. Enjoy. -Alex Whalley
I’m sure you’ve seen a pitch like this:
In my brand new internet marketing home study course you will find 10 modules containing valuable information about: how to create a marketing plan for your business, how to write a sales letter, how to set up an email autoresponder sequence and why the money is in the list, how to make thousands of people to follow you on twitter, how to easily record marketing videos that sell, how to set up AdWords campaign, and dozens of other useful things. The course consists of 20 hours of video, 5 hours of audio, 3 workbooks, 2 PDF reports (each 50 pages long), and a membership site subscription for a full year.
What’s wrong with this message?
The easiest, and instant, answer to it is: “so what?!”
The “so what” because a prospective customer can’t possibly imagine what all these things can give them. Why should they be able to create marketing plans? Why writing sales letters is such a handy skill to have? Why do they need an email autoresponder sequence? Why is this twitter-thing important? All these questions haven’t been answered. And if one marketer isn’t willing to answer them then a customer will find another one who will be.
Here’s the #1 reason you should write about the benefits of your product not its features, if you plan to sell it over the internet:
People are not able to invent the benefits a product can give them by themselves if this type of product has been present on the market for less than 10 years.
Why TVs’ salesmen don’t give a crap…
Or why they don’t need to bother with benefits.
Here’s a picture of an ad trying to sell some TVs. (By the way, try to guess what the currency is.)
As you can see there’s much information there, yet none of it are benefits. The writer has taken their time to make sure that the minimalistic copy contains things like: diagonal screen, technology, Full HD, and some other stuff (even the thickness of the TV).
In this case the benefits could have been omitted. We, the prospective clients, understand the benefits without anybody saying them out loud. And that’s only because we are quite familiar with the concept of a TV. We know what it is and how it works. We know which parameters are important and what we should pay attention to if we’re shopping for a new one.
Here’s what benefits we see:
- 42” diagonal screen – “it will be like a cinema except in my own home”
- LED technology – “this newest technology will save some energy and give a little relief to my eyes”
- Resolution, Full HD – “I won’t miss even the smallest detail – I will see everything that movie producers wanted to show me”
- TV’s thickness – “it won’t occupy much space, and it’s perfect for hanging on the wall, it will look like a painting or something”
The TVs’ salesmen don’t even mention these benefits because we, the customers, already know them. We know what parameters are important in a TV and what’s more – we expect to see them in an ad. We know what benefits are connected with every feature. We also know that the features are the only things that differentiate any two given TVs (apart from the manufacturer).
All of this creates the final image of a market in which you don’t really have to say anything about the benefits.
Let’s see how an ad selling TVs could have looked like if it wasn’t such a popular product yet.
Our TV has a 42” diagonal screen which makes it twice as big as the next in line 37” screen. This means that you can feel like you’re in a cinema, yet without the need of leaving your home, waiting in queues and any additional expenses. The LED technology, in which the screen is built, uses 20% less energy than similar size plasma TVs and gives you the sharpest image possible so your eyes can have some relief. The Full HD scale image will make sure that you won’t miss even the smallest detail that the creators of your favorite movie wanted you to see. The smallest casing on the market – 3.9cm thick, makes it possible to place this TV wherever you like, even on a wall so it’ll look like a painting.
That’s a long piece of writing ain’t it? It’s much quicker to simply write:
42” LED, Full HD 1080, 3.9cm thick
…and the effect is quite the same
Here’s what you can do with your own product
If you’re in a market of selling TVs, washing machines, cell phones, personal computers, etc. (have any other examples? shoot me a comment!) you can stop reading right here.
The truth to be told is that the more a specific product type is known among the general scope of people the more you can focus on its features (as a marketer). Those are usually the products that have been available for more than 10 years.
You can focus on the features not because of laziness (as they are easier to communicate than benefits) but because a prospective client expects to see information about features, it’s the only thing they care about. They want to get to know them because that’s the only way they can compare a specific product to another, similar one.
If you’re selling some kind of an information product or promoting your new startup then in most cases it won’t be known among the general scope of people. Another thing is that every information product is different and comparing features is irrelevant. That’s why your marketing strategy should be built on benefits not features.
If you need some help to make a decision whether or not you can focus on features only, you can take a minute to answer these 5 questions:
5 questions that will tell you if you should talk about features only
- Were products similar to yours available on the market 10 years ago?
- Were they popular throughout the whole period of the last 10 years?
- Does your grandma have one?
- Does your 6 year old kid know what the product is for?
- Are all of your friends able to tell you what the most important features in a product like that are?
If you have 5 “yeses” then you can should talk about the features of your product. If there was even one “no” talk about the benefits.
What do you think, what information products or startups have the chance to come clean with 5 “yeses”? Shoot me a comment.
About the author: Karol K. (@carlosinho) is a 20-something year old web 2.0 entrepreneur from Poland who hates marketing but loves to train capoeira. But anyway, tune in to get his advice on starting an online business.
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Selling feature will only bear fruit if the feature satisfies an important need in the market otherwise it will not work. Using manipulated statistic to promote a product will eventually back fire as competitorreveal the facts.
Sure, but using manipulated benefits will surely back fire as well.
don’t think so, because as a buyer who are seeking for the great qualities of a product its not enough for me in just seeing the features.Lolz
Agree with every word of this post. When i’m writing my sales letters I always keep in the back of my mind that people who are buying drills don’t really want a drill but a hole!
Most people focus on benefits rather than feed. I f the features satisfies a need then there is a benefit.
Very nice concept. This would be beneficial to both seller and customer. Because for one, not all potential buyers can understand the ‘Features’ they are stating. Not all people are ‘Techie” and up to date.
Very informative post! Sometimes it’s not really all about what your product can offer but what it can benefit to your probable customers. Thank you for sharing this.. Great job!
I think first we have to read the customer’s mind and then execute things accordingly.The guest post above has strong message containing.Try to execute unique concept of advertisement.Social media is one of them…
I am actually working on my pitch page right now for one of my ebooks and this is always the hardest part. You don’t want to make the pitch too long or too short. It really has to be the perfect length with the right information.
Agree! Marketers should really be practical, concise and straight to point about what they’re product can benefit their customers. Thanks for sharing this.. Good job!
Hahaha,really true.I’ve tried writting so much about features of some products,but it’s like the more people read about it,the more they hate the product
. So what i do is write little and place lots of screenshots about the products.That helps me a lot.
In my opinion it sill depends on people to whom you are trying to sell as many are interested in features as they are aware of what this device will give but they want to know how powerful it is and compare to something else he/she has heard.
But as you can’t understand what people are looking for at first you have to explain what they will get not what features item has but still you can’t forget for those who are looking for some exact specs.
Thanks for ideas!
Exactly. It’s got to be about the “what does it do for me” .
I love the ideas here, this can be an advantage to both costumers and the sellers. As for my own opinion in buying products, the first thing I consider is how that certain product can benefit me. I am not more of the features since some of them were not used anyway.
Products should contain these two: features and benefits. But as a consumer, I preferably ask the benefits of the product I want to acquire. It should pay back the price which I paid for.
I think nice list of features along with benefits and content yield better sales.Thanks for sharing a useful information in marketing.
I am happy to visit this post. I agreed with KITEBOARDING MEXICO words that we should have to read customer’s mind first then execute things. Feature and benefits of a product both are equally important for me.
People attract more on finding out product benefits rather than its feature that is why for good selling, good description of product’s benefit is important.
Pete you are so right, unfortunately people see only money and money.
Wow! These are perfect ideas telling us the benefits and down sides of this writing features. Thank you for sharing this informative articles…
Wow, this is a great post. This sounds like it could come right out of a coaching product. And, I have never thought of this before. I love learning new things!
I think that writing about benefits, and not features, applies to every single internet marketing product (in the internet marketing niche). With products in this niche, questions 3, 4, and 5 will definitely not be answered with a yes. Questions 1 and 2 also have a possibility of a “no”.
Anyways, thanks for sharing this! I bookmarked this.
Benefits are really all a buyer cares about. They do sometimes wonder, and you make clear the circumstances, if your product has additional features that others don’t. But the explanation needn’t go beyond, “It has chlorophyll.” The subtle message is that your competitors lack something that results in added benefits.
I have never thought that writing about the features could actually not help anyone. It is so true if they don’t know what the features are going to do for them, then what is the point. I will have to start writing more about how these features will benefit the consumer.
Your comment in relation to information products not being comparable is very true. I am constantly having to explain to customers the difference between my offering and the next companies. The reality is that pretty well all information products are relatively unique and you need to focus on the benefits. I really liked your 5 question checklist, a concise way of working out which way to go.
These 5 questions can be replaced with familiar ones, but it doesn’t matter if you want to sell anything. To make people buy something you need to ensure them that the product they are going to buy is the best, and only benefits description can help in it.
Franks? I know to add is in English (and that Franks ceased to exist ten years ago); but I can’t imagine anyone paying that quantity of pounds or dollars for a TV, and franks are the only currency I’m aware of where it would work out as a logical price. That’s going to bother me all day now.
On topic; I think the value of stressing features changes with the product. There are items such as cars and televisions where the majority of consumers are going to be fully aware of what the item does, but similarly there are items such as the infamous ‘Shamwow’ that built a market presence entirely off the back of having its features rattled off at high speed. Different strokes for different folks and all of that.
In my case I always look into with Benefits, because you can find something more if there’s already this one…
I got a little bit confused with the title of the article but as I read the content, I found it very interesting and helpful.
It made a lot of sense and I learned a lot from it. 
Thank you so much for sharing this article. 
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