Features & Benefits

Features & Benefits

Features tell but benefits sell.

Ask yourself, “What am I selling?” It’s rarely the product or service. You are selling a benefit, something that registers at the emotional level. If you are selling fishing rods, for example, you’re selling the excitement of successfully landing that monster in the lake. If you are selling cosmetics, you’re selling the confidence that comes from feeling beautiful.

The most successful ads use words that relate to the customer. Use You and Yours and never put the focus on Me, Mine, Our, My or We. Create several emotional words associated with the product – such as entertaining, exciting, romantic, delighted, or proud – and use at least one of them in the ad.

Take a look at the list of features below, taken directly from current advertising and marketing materials.

1. Automatic movement
2. Ratcheting divers bezel
3. Triple ideal cut diamond
4. Pre-owned watch
5. Green or recycled jewelry
6. Platinum mounting

Each is a feature—a factual statement about the product or service being promoted. But features aren’t what entice customers to buy. That’s where benefits come in. A benefit answers the question “What’s in it for me?” meaning the feature provides the customer with something of value to them. So-and this is where most businesses go wrong-that must mean:

1. The benefit of an automatic movement is convenience, not having to set or wind the watch.
2. The benefit of a ratcheting divers bezel is that you will never mistake how long you’ve been on a dive.
3. The benefits of the triple ideal cut is that it gives the most possible fire and brilliance to the diamond.
4. The benefit of a pre-owned watch is that it doesn’t cost as much as new but looks the same.
5. The benefit of green jewelry is that it’s better for the environment.
6. The benefit of platinum is that it doesn’t wear out and keeps the diamond safe and secure.

While these may seem like true benefits, they’re really just elaborations on the features. So what is truly a benefit?

The best way to understand the true benefit of our merchandise—or to answer the “What’s in it for me?” question—is to focus instead on results. A customer’s perception of each feature’s results is what attracts him or her to a particular product. When someone chooses a watch with an automatic movement, the assumption is that the benefit is convenience. The actual results are that they don’t have to read the instructions, try to figure out how to wind and set the watch, remember to set and wind the watch daily and, most importantly, feel stupid if they forget to set and wind the watch and it shows the wrong time. Those results are the true benefits.

When you try to sell the features of your product or service, you’re making the customer do all the work to figure out why they want the feature. It’s in our best interest to draw the connection for them. But to do that, we have to know the results ourselves. Let’s take another look at that features list to see the possible benefits from the customer’s point of view:

1. Automatic movement: I won’t ever look at my watch and realize it is not on the correct time because I forgot to set it or wind it and feel stupid, especially if someone else asks me what time it is.
2. Ratcheting divers bezel: I won’t put myself in danger by staying down too long or coming up too fast. And it will make me look like an active, daring person who goes scuba diving even if I don’t. A big divers watch makes me feel manly.
3. Triple ideal cut: the superior sparkle of this diamond can be seen by everyone and will set my wife apart from her friends even if their diamonds are bigger and no one will look down on me because I can’t afford a bigger diamond.
4. Pre-owned: I can own a really expensive watch even though in reality it is not in my budget and people will think I’m more successful than I really am. Even if my car is old or my clothes are shabby, when they see my watch they will hold me in higher esteem for owning such a desirable thing.
5. Green jewelry: I can feel good about doing something for the environment even if I usually don’t bother to recycle and drive an SUV and buy plastic water bottles. I can tell others that I really care about our world because I bought green jewelry and they’ll think I’m a good person.
6. Platinum: My jewelry will continue to look new even when it’s getting old, so I don’t have to replace it all the time or wear a crummy, beat-up ring that people will think is not valuable. Platinum prongs will keep my diamond safe and my husband won’t ever be furious with me for losing the diamond.

We think the jewelry industry and our business in particular is awesome, because we fully understand what we’re offering. But a prospect knows little or nothing about our offerings. That’s why they can’t make the same connections about it that we can. Using that information, we must learn to put ourselves in their shoes as the buyer. Approach our own products as if you’d never seen them before. Then ask yourself “What results will that feature bring me?” and “Why would I want to consider buying this item?”

Think in terms of results. There’s nothing wrong with the term “benefits,” but if you refocus the problem to think in terms of “results,” the situation becomes clearer. Your dilemma isn’t features vs. benefits, but rather features vs. results. Start with your current features, and then take each one into the results phase. When you ask yourself “What results do I get from a dual time zone feature?” the answer isn’t “I will know what time it is back home when I travel.” The answer is rather “I don’t have to bother with resetting my watch on the way there and back, and people will think that I am a world-traveler even if the furthest distance I go is to the 7-11 on the corner.” Then, just to be sure, take the results one more step: “People will think I am better/smarter/richer/more interesting than I really am.”

When you use this “results” approach to describing an item’s benefits, you can be sure our marketing messages and catalog descriptions will be right on target. And that’s the surest way to get business!