What’s the difference between benefits and features?

Features

A feature is what it is:

Multitrack recording tools

Documentation repositories

Wearable technology webinars

When you get to the feature, you will have arrived at a noun — tools, repositories, webinars.

Unfortunately, nobody buys features — not in products, services, programs or ideas. So if you’re writing about features, nobody’s going to buy it, or read it.

Advantages

An advantage is what it does:

Creates clear audio

Holds thousands of resources

Makes wearable technology better

When you get to the advantage, you will have arrived at an adjective or adverb — a modifier — like clear, thousands, better. 

Unfortunately, nobody buys advantages — not in products, services, programs or ideas. So if you’re writing about advantages, nobody’s going to buy it, or read it. 

Benefits

An benefit is what you can do with it:

Get your message across

Create your webpage faster 

Design wearable technology faster

When you get to the benefit, you will have arrived at a verb. 

The good news is, everybody buys benefits — in products, services, programs or ideas. So if you’re writing about benefits, your readers are more likely to pay attention to, understand, remember and act on your message. 

Features vs benefits

So how can you turn features into benefits? Show your prospective customers and clients how they can save time, make money, avoid effort or otherwise improve their lives with your product features.

After all, nobody wants a mobile phone. We want what we can do with a mobile phone.

Here’s how it works:

Before:

ABC is a multitrack recording tool.

Don’t write about your stuff. Write about what your readers can do with your stuff. Focus on the benefits of your products:

Get your message heard with professional audio from ABC. 

Before:

Check out the new section in our documentation repository and start learning now!

This verb isn’t a benefit; it’s a task. Don’t tell readers to check out, register for, subscribe to, join you or attend. Tell them what they’ll be able to do differently if they check out, register for, subscribe to, join you or attend.

Create your webpage faster now with our documentation of the new process.

Before:

Designing wearable technology is a unique challenge for engineers of all disciplines. But there are many ways to make it easier.

It’s great to hit readers in their pain points. But the best marketing strategy goes further. What can they do differently with your “many ways”?

Learn to design wearable tech that customers want to buy with these seven tips.

Before:

XYZ, an ABC Community, is co-hosting a webinar with LMNOQ at 11 a.m. on Sept. 28 to give design engineers a brief overview of RF, explore RF applications, and go over the basics of ceramic capacitors, before taking a deep look into ceramic RF capacitors.

Don’t give your readers time, date, place before convincing them that they want to attend your event. Instead, answer the question in your reader’s mind: What’s in it for me? Why should I go? 

Plus, the list of things you’re going to cover sounds like a threat, not a promise. What will I be able to do differently once I learn these things?

Design Engineers: Learn how you can save time and money using RF capacitors in your projects in this webinar. 

Before:

Get FREE 24/7 on-demand, emotional support, and mental health coaching via text, through the Didi app. Sign up here!

Notice that pileup on modifiers — advantages — before the feature: FREE 24/7 on-demand. That’s a lot of words to describe your product. I’m not ready to sign up, because I don’t know what’s in it for me. Solution: Write in verbs about the reader. 

Stressed? Anxious? Feeling down? Are your thoughts, emotions or behavior out of control? Get relief any time, night or day, for free via text with Didi, an emotional and mental health app.

Before:

Get our Small Business Growth Kit — with our 5-step guide and pitching template, growth stories from successful entrepreneurs, and best practices. You’ll also receive a personalized business assessment call from a sales coach to help you take your small business to new heights.

The kit, guide, template, stories, best practices and the call are features. What will I be able to do with this stuff?

Multiply your revenue and slash your expenses with our Small Business Growth Kit.

Before:

XYZ devices and solutions deliver industry-leading security to businesses of every size, while reducing IT burden across the organization.

Devices, solutions and security are features; industry-leading is an advantage. What can I do with this stuff?

Slash IT maintenance times, secure your intellectual property, and keep your private information private with XYZ security features.

Before:

Sign up for our annual event to learn how to streamline your sales & business processes.

Don’t lead with the task. Instead, lead with the benefit and follow up with the task:

Learn to close your sales deals twice as fast at ABC Live on 12 July in Geneva.

Before:

Success plans are a win-win for you and your customers.

Hmmmm … maybe. What does win-win mean? And don’t lead with your sales plans:

Predict risks before they occur, implement faster and reduce downtime with a success plan. 

Before:

Multiple touch points are essential to the sales journey.

Maybe. What will multiple touch points do for me?

Close bigger deals faster by building solid relationships with multiple touch points.

Before:

With all the great features of update 3.0.12B, DataDeluxe makes it even easier to empower everyone in your organization with trusted data.

1. And then what will happen? How will I benefit?

Make more profitable business decisions with more insightful data using DataDeluxe 3.0.12B’s new analytics capabilities.

Before:

This tool will drive your operational and revenue goals.

What can I do with it?

Grow your revenue faster and get the job done more efficiently with this new tool.

Features vs. benefits

It’s one of the best marketing strategies out there — Focus on the benefits, not the features:

• Don’t write about your products or services, write about the benefits of your products or services. Show how readers will save time, boost their bottom line, self-actualize, live healthier longer and otherwise improve their lives with your product features.
• Hit your prospective customers in their pain points. What problems can they solve using your products, services, programs or ideas? Remember, “negative benefits” often outperform positive ones. So Make ’em sick, make ’em well.
• Answer the question, What’s in it for me? After all, nobody wants a mobile phone; we want what the mobile phone can do for us. So stop writing about your tools, webinars, updates, plans, events, archives, tips, apps, kits, solutions and devices. And start writing about the reader and the reader’s needs. 
• Write in verbs, not nouns or adjectives. Remember, features are nouns; advantages are adjectives; benefits are verbs. Focus on the verb. 
• Lead with the benefit, substantiate with the feature. Don’t lead with you and your stuff; lead with the readers and what they can do with your stuff. 

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Having trouble finding reader benefits? Maybe you need to ask different questions.

Ask your subject matter experts:

• What happens if our customers buy this product or service?
• What happens if they don’t?
• What happens if members of the community get behind this public policy?
• What happens if they don’t?

Or take a tip from Kelly Parthen, PR manager at Agilent Technologies. She keeps asking her subject matter experts: “So what?” “So what?” “So what?” Eventually, they get to the benefit.
Keep asking, and you’ll hit benefits like:

They’ll be able to watch twice the TV in half the time.

They’ll ensure that their children’s school buildings aren’t constructed of corrugated cardboard.

They’ll get the body of Kendall Jenner while following an all-Twix-bar diet.

However you find them, benefits will make your products, services and ideas — not to mention your copy — more relevant and valuable to your reader.

That means you will…

Having trouble finding your benefits?

Try prompting your subject matter expert with the line “that means they will …” The end of that sentence is likely to be a benefit.

Your subject matter expert says, “We can handle our client’s internal audit functions.”

You say, “That means our clients will …”

Your subject matter expert says: “That means our clients will free up their own employees for bottom-line projects and better control the costs of producing internal audits.”

Now you’re talking benefits.

Present your benefits, too.

“That means you will …” also makes a great way to present your benefits:

Try it.

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If you were giving away a Hawaiian vacation to people who signed up for your webinar, which would you lead with? The vacation, or the webinar?

From what I’ve seen — from training more than 25,000 communicators in more than 1,000 organizations over 20 years — most folks would choose the webinar.

Sign up for our webinar
and get a dream trip to Hawaii!

But leading with the webinar won’t grab your readers’ attention and move them to act.

Instead, lead with the benefits and substantiate with the features. Focus on your reader’s wants and needs first, then follow up with your organization and its products, services and ideas.

Steal a trick from these Silver Anvil winners.

These benefits leads from PRSA Silver Anvil-winning campaigns are great models of leading with the benefits and substantiating with the features.

Make the switch.

Sometimes, a small switch is all you need to put the benefits first. Check out these before-and-afters:

Next time you write a press release, brochure or newsletter article, put the reader benefits first.

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“Clean your face,” demands a hotel soap wrapper. No, YOU clean YOUR face! I want to respond.

I’ve been seeing a lot of messages like these: messages that sound like benefits but that really are not. Fake benefits.

These fake benefits mirror the structure of benefits messages — Do/this (Save/money) — but not their spirit. Instead, the structure of fake benefits is “Non-benefit-focused verb/feature.”

The structure of benefits messages is:

Do/this

For instance:

Save/money

The structure of fake benefits is:

Non-benefits-focused verb/feature

For instance:

Enjoy/our new product

To move readers to act, avoid these three types of fake benefits.

1. Get our product.

Yesterday, I received an email with this subject line:

“Learn more about New Media Gateway”

While that looks like a benefits statement — it starts with a verb and the implied “you,” after all — it’s actually a fake benefits statement. Its real subject is not the reader, but the communicator’s organization.

Instead of using your verb to point to your product, service, program or idea, write about what readers can do with your product, service, program or idea.

2. ‘Congratulations on choosing us.’

We tend to send these messages out after we win an award: “Pat yourself on the back for choosing us.”

With these benefits, we’re really writing about how great we are:

Get XYZ feature.

Reap many rewards.

Rely on our 75 years of experience.

Value the attention we pay to detail.

Appreciate our dedication to accuracy.

Pat yourself on the back for choosing us.

Instead, write about how the readers’ lives will be different because they chose you.

3. Go to your room.

We learned the imperative voice as the command voice in high school. And it can be a command: Go to your room. Make your bed. Take out the trash.

But you use the imperative voice to move people to act, make it the invitation voice — not the command voice: Save money. Make money. Save time. Avoid effort.

Avoid the command voice. These messages are actually tasks:

Take our class.

Stop by our booth.

Attend our conference.

Subscribe to our ezine.

Sign up for our webinar.

Make it the invitation voice instead. Rather than tell readers what to do, let them know what they’ll get when they do it:

Learn to double your income when you take our class.

Get a chance at a free Apple Watch when you stop by our booth.

Network with peers — maybe even meet your next boss — when you attend our conference.

Nix ‘get our feature.’

The hardest part of crafting a benefits statement is finding the benefit, not writing the line.

So dig in. Think. Don’t be satisfied with a statement like “Get our feature.” Learn enough about the subject you’re writing about and your audience members to figure out what the former will do for the latter.

Remember what you learned in kindergarten: When you cheat, you only hurt yourself. But when you cheat on benefits statements, you hurt yourself, your readers and your organization.

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I once reviewed an article for a company’s sales force with the headline:

Extraordinary customer experience: Be a customer advocate. Be Extraordinary

What followed was a reminder about the company’s guiding principles, an announcement of a new program, a bulleted list of tasks for participating in the program and a reference to a handout with all the rules.

Then, 228 words in, this oh-and-by-the-way aside:

Here’s the best part: Winners are treated to an amazing, all-expenses paid trip for two for four days in Las Vegas.

Here’s a simple tip for getting people to participate in your programs, buy your products and services and read more of your promotion:

Stop writing about your programs, products and services and promotions.

Start writing about what people can do with them.

If they might win a trip to Vegas, that’s your headline. That’s your lead.

It’s the easiest way to draw readers in and move them to act: Lead with the benefits. Substantiate with the features.

How to find the benefits

To lead with the benefits, first you have to find them. And that can be a tough, given that our assignments come to us in the form of features.

So start there.

1. Start with the features.

The feature is What it is. It’s an attribute of the product, service, program or idea.

Take Apple’s new MacBook Air. It includes a:

New Apple battery

Would you drop $1,100 and change for that thing? Me neither.

And that’s how people feel when they read about features in your pieces. Nobody’s looking for features. So you need to translate.

2. Translate into advantages.

The next thing you ask, is “Why is that feature important?” That will lead you to the advantages. If the feature is What it is, the advantage is What it does.

In the case of that MacBook Air, the advantage is:

It’s a long-lasting battery with a 12-hour charge.

One thing I’ve noticed by doing this a million times for my clients: When you get to the feature, you will have landed on a noun: battery.

When you get the advantage, you will have landed on a modifier — an adjective or adverb —  like long-lasting and 12-hour.

I’m starting to get the picture, but it’s not long-lasting or 12-hour that readers and buyers are looking for. So you need to keep translating. The next thing you’ll translate into is the benefits.

3. Land on the benefit.

If the feature is What it is, and the advantage is What it does, the benefit is What it will do for you.

In the case of the MacBook Air, that benefit includes:

Taking a transatlantic flight? Line up the movies, because MacBook Air is ready to play for up to 13 hours — nonstop.

Now we’re talkin’.

Lead with the benefits.

Once you find your features, advantages and benefits, lead with the benefits and substantiate with the features. Features work at the end of a positioning statement, but don’t start your message with them. Sandwich the advantages between the features and benefits:

Play movies for up to 13 hours — nonstop — with our new long-lasting Apple battery.

[Benefit] Play movies for up to 13 hours — nonstop — with our [Advantages] new, long-lasting [Feature] Apple Battery.

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Quick! Which would you rather have: Apple’s new incredibly responsive A9X chip? Or the ability to perform complex jobs like editing 4K video quickly and smoothly via your iPad?

And that’s the problem.

Your readers don’t care about your organization and its stuff. They care about themselves and their needs.

So to sell your products, services and ideas, you need to show how your organization and its stuff can fill your readers’ needs. One way to do that: Translate your message from features into advantages into benefits.

So don’t sell me a MacBook Air. Sell me on the time I’ll save with the Air.

The problem is, most readers can’t get from “AX9 chip” to “perform complex jobs like editing 4K video” by themselves. In fact, sales research tells us that some 70% of our readers can’t translate from advantages to benefits without help, says Linda Miller, president of The Marketing Coach.

So don’t rely on your readers to translate. That’s your job.

Lead with the benefits.

Once you’ve identified your features, advantages and benefits, you’ll want to lead with the benefits and substantiate with the features. (Or, as my clients at Verizon Wireless say, “We’ve been doing a lot of B-A-F-ing.”)

That means you’ll focus on your reader’s needs first, then follow up with your organization and its stuff.

Here’s how it looks, with examples from Apple’s latest iPad promo:

• [Benefit] View movies that look like the big screen on the small screen with [Feature] our new display, which uses the same color space as the digital cinema industry. With [Feature] 25% greater color saturation than previous iPad models, colors are more [Advantages] vivid, true to life and engaging.
• [Benefit] Perform complex jobs like editing 4K video quickly and smoothly with the new iPad Pro’s [Advantages] incredibly responsive [Feature] A9X chip.
• [Benefit] Lose yourself in your favorite apps and games, thanks to our [Advantages] graphics performance. [Feature] With double the graphics performance of iPad Air 2, iPad Pro offers [Advantages] detailed visuals, fluid animations and like-real effects.
• [Benefit] Shoot beautiful photos and video with our [Feature] 8-megapixel iSight camera. [Benefit] You’ll always look great thanks to True Tone flash, [Feature] which captures real skin tones in every kind of lighting.
• [Benefit] Shoot beautiful photos and video with our [Feature] 8-megapixel iSight camera. [Benefit] You’ll always look great thanks to True Tone flash, [Feature] which captures real skin tones in every kind of lighting.

How can you sell your organization and its stuff by focusing first on your readers and their needs?

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