Selling Benefits: Pitching To Your Customer's Needs

Focusing on the features of a product or service rather than how it benefits the consumer is considered by many marketing experts to be a mortal sin

. Features merely tell the consumer what a product or service is or does. Benefits sell the product or service. Benefits convince prospective customers that your product can improve their lives. Let's look at a couple examples:

Product: Car engine. Feature: Powerful 250 hp V6 engine. Benefit: Climb hills without losing speed and irritating other drivers.

Product: Video card. Feature: The most powerful graphics processor. Benefit: Never again get fragged by your friends due to low frame rates.

These examples reveal the contrast between feature and benefit. Features focus on the product or service. Benefits focus on the customer. Effective advertising never takes its eye off the customer.

You can describe a benefit in numerous ways. In the second example above, I could have described the main benefit of the graphics card as "faster rendering of 3D maps in AutoCAD." If I were selling the card to map builders, I may have done just that. But in this case, I'm trying to sell the card to video gamers, so I pitched the product to the needs of the gamer--not getting killed ("fragged") in a game because you have a slow graphics card.

A winter coat may be waterproof. How does that benefit the person wearing it? An air mattress may be self inflatable. How does that benefit the person who has to blow it up?

Does a focus on benefits mean that you should completely avoid mentioning the features? No! Sell both. How do you do that? Take a look at this example:

The XQ-342 winter coat's inner lining is made from improved NASA technology and has a waterproof outer lining [features], ensuring that you'll remain warm and toasty even on the wettest, coldest days. [benefits]

or:

Save your lungs -- and time -- [benefits], with this self-inflatable mattress that can fully fill itself in under 60 seconds! [features]

These examples illustrate the effectiveness of the one-two punch in advertising. In the first example I state the features and then describe the benefits. In the second, I first list the benefits followed by the features that produce those benefits.

If benefits are so important, why even bother describing the features? Let's look at the example of the coat. It keeps you warm. But how? With its improved NASA technology. Now when your prospective customers are looking for a warm coat, they'll remember that they want the one with the "improved NASA technology."

Here's an exercise to get the feature/benefit juices flowing. List all the features and benefits of your product or service. When you have two good lists in the works, categorize each item as a feature or benefit. Then, start drawing lines to connect each feature with its corresponding benefit(s). Once you do that, you'll be well primed to pitch the perfect ad.

Now go forth, repent, and sin no more. Sell the benefits... and the features!

by: Stu Wiseman

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