Do you know how to tell the difference between benefits and features? It’s really important that anyone marketing a product or service does because using benefits to your full advantage makes a huge difference to sales success. Being able to craft your copywriting to make benefits stand out more than anything else is a skill that will pay dividends. Read on to find out how you can improve your copywriting charm.

Features vs benefits…what’s the difference?

Features are the nuts and bolts of how a product is built or what a service includes. Benefits on the other hand are the ways the product or service improve lives. You have probably heard the analogy that no one buys a light bulb for the sake of having it sit on the kitchen bench. The benefit of the light bulb is so that you can shine the light on your bench and can see all the wonderful things you are creating in the kitchen; making your kitchen a joy to cook in! 

I will use running shoes as a further example because this is actually something I was trained to sell many years ago. Features would include something like the extra reinforcement on the inside of the shoe to make it resistant to collapsing inwards. Information about that feature is not that useful to a prospective customer without knowing the benefit – injury prevention for people who pronate (roll their feet in more than they should) while they run. Why is that benefit critical to a successful sale? Many runners know if they are 'pronators', so seeing or hearing that the shoes are designed for their particular issue will resonate with them and create an emotional reaction (“ahhh, it would be great to get rid of my knee pain that pronation causes”) that leads them to the behaviour a shoe retailer seeks – buying the shoes, or at least trying them on.

Cutting down the copy clutter – simple tips to organise information

A list of features can sometimes be meaningless clutter in product information, especially with technical products and this can water down a great message if it is not organised properly. Instead, leading with the benefits and then tying them back to the features (if anyone is interested in following that path to more detailed information) is the way to capture and hold a reader’s attention.

I mentioned organising information properly…you may wonder what that involves. Whilst every scenario is different, here are a few ways you could present information so that the benefits come across loud and clear as the primary message:

• Split up benefits and features. Reduce the copy overwhelm by only showing the most important information up front and then allowing the reader to dig deeper only if they choose to. On a website this can be done by using tabbed tables where the top tab of the table shows benefits and then the one(s) underneath show features. This is often used on an ecommerce website where information about material that clothing is made off is further down the information hierarchy, however “reduces skin irritation – beautifully soft to wear” is one of the most prominent benefits. This can also be done via links to inner pages on a website – e.g. the homepage has benefits and these are linked through to pages (that may not even be on the main menu) to provide more detail. A brochure may do this by including a table of features at the back. 
• Include CTVs as well as CTAs. The buttons and strong links on your website are likely to all be ‘calls to action’, however you should look at replacing some of those with ‘calls to value’. For example, instead of having all buttons say a generic “join now” you could have some say “Transform your lifestyle today” or “Start learning now”. Calls to value give you an opportunity to highlight or reinforce benefits in a simple way.
• Use text formatting effectively. Subheadings, bolding, bullet points, different font styles or sizes…these are all ways that you can make some text stand out, allowing other text to recede. This makes skim reading much easier. What do you want people to skim read? The benefits of course! 
• Clever use of images to support copy. You can reinforce benefits visually in a way that supports text. I remember writing copy for a pest control website a while back and pointing out to the owner that showing pictures of pests is not that appealing to someone that wants solutions and peace of mind. Prospective customers do not want to be dwelling on the mice infesting their basement but rather the professionals that are going to sort it out. Choosing images that reinforce professionalism and calm are what is needed in that example.

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