The psychological reason behind Features vs. Benefits

Every marketing book has exposed you to the maxim, “sell benefits, not features”. Today, we are going to review the psychological reason behind this and why you can’t afford to ignore it.

A feature is a descriptive phrase about your product of service. “We have the best materials”, “Our team is made up of top experts”, “Our jewelry is hand-made” or “Our window replacement service includes cleanup” are all examples of features.

Notice something about these phrases. They all contain “our” or “we“. By definition, features are about the product or service and therefore, about you.  And usually, your customer doesn’t care about you. Sorry.

Customers don’t buy features. They buy benefits.

A benefit explains what  the feature gives them. “Lasts longer, so it saves you money”, “Creating the right solution for your situation”, “Unique and elegant” or “No sweeping, vacuuming or dusting required” are the respective benefits of the features we discussed a moment ago.  See the difference?

Benefits explain how the product or service improves the customer’s condition. It’s about them. Your customer only cares about themselves.

You see, people naturally gravitate to stuff that interests them and “them” is pretty high on that list. They look for situations that describe themselves. When they recognize them, they perk up and take notice. Which is exactly what you want. To achieve this “interruption” and force them to pay attention, express everything in terms of a benefit.

If customers recognize themselves, they’ll be naturally interested.

Talking in “benefits” language is counter-intuitive. We like describing  things in tangible, featured-based ways when we speak (e.g. shirt is made of cotton) and simply assume that the implied benefits (shirt is breathable) will be naturally understood. This is false.

People are too busy to make sense of your marketing. If it is not clear, they’ll spend a fraction of a second  trying to connect the dots themselves, past that they’ll give up and not bother.

Neither is good for your business.

Confused people do not buy. So, connect the dots for them.

Psychologically, you do not want the customer’s brain to be distracted trying to connect features to benefits. You should do it for them. Even if you think it’s SO OBVIOUS how your widget benefits them, I’m here  to tell you that by not spelling it out, you are introducing a psychological obstacle to your sale.

The window replacement service that features a “cleanup crew” may seem as obvious as you can get. Yet, it actually triggers lots of “background noise”-thinking, such as: “Are they really going to clean up?”, “Is it going to be a good job or just a cursory cleanup?”, “Will I still  have to dust the rest of the house?”, “Am I paying extra for nothing?”

Don’t invite the chatter. Simply connect the dots by expressing the clear benefit :  “Our cleanup crew will leave your house exactly how we found it. No sweeping, vacuuming or dusting required, just sit back and enjoy your new windows.”

Assignment:

Pull out a piece of your marketing material and read it. Is it mostly feature-based? If so, find the powerful benefit that the feature provides. To do this, read each feature and ask yourself “Which means..?”. When you answer, ask it a few more times, as needed.  Keep doing this until the benefits are clear. Out of all the benefits, choose the one that is most  important for your target audience. Market that.