Features Vs. Benefits. Why it matters?

While creating content promoting your products and services to your target audience an ample number of times, you may start telling them about the features of your products or services. In other words, how good is that? This way if you didn’t notice, the message you are sending out is that your products/services are much better, which doesn’t mean anything to them. You are talking more about Yourself (Us).

When you talk to customers, talk about the benefits of your products/services, not the features.

Talk about how it can help them. Talk about how it solves their problem. In other words, what’s in it for them?

I have done some A/B testing on this, and discovered that ‘You’ wins, always! Answer this question on behalf of your customer, WIIFM – What’s in it for me?

When you inform your prospects about the benefits of using your products or services for them, they listen! Because it interests them and describes the advantage of using it. Resulting, they invest happily.

On the other hand, when you bombard them with too much information, telling them, ‘how good your business is and how great are your products’ – then, it doesn’t add any value to them, so they leave.

Similarly, when you are writing a proposal to a prospective customer, double-check the proposal once complete. Check how many times it includes ‘you’ and how many times it contains ‘us’. If it contains ‘us’ more than ‘you’, then you are writing the proposal to yourself.

So use this approach in your ad copy, creatives etc. and tell your customers how can you help them solve their problem by being a guide, not a hero. This one thing I learnt from one of my favourite books, called “Building a Story Brand by Donald Miller“. Do read this book if you haven’t already.

The moral of the story – Features tell; benefits sell.