Great, but What’s the Benefit?

I read through my regular sources of news today, but in addition to reading the news (Hey did you know there’s a golfer named Tiger, a baskeball player from Medford who is good, and it will quit raining today?) I spent time looking at the advertisements, really looking at them.  These are ads that cost the companies hundreds or even thousands of dollars to run, but throughout my viewing I kept thinking, “where are the benefits?”

When I reached the end, I realized that less than 10% of the ads were benefit oriented. And yet, if you were to ask the copywriters who wrote these ads, each of them could give you a lengthy lecture on how important strong benefit statements are to writing good copy.  Benefits are those statements that turn your products into what the customer is actually buying.  Features are those aspects of your product that are compelling advantages – and what most ads contain.  Features are important, but only to you.  Benefits are the need, problem, or desire that your customer is looking to address.  And to be effective, this is where you need to meet them.

The problem is that many of us think we are writing about benefits, but we are writing only near misses. We use words that take the place of benefits and mistake them for the benefits themselves, leaving you with only well-intentioned features isntead.  Here are some ways that can help you write stronger benefits statements:

1. Go Big.  Before you start to write ad copy, you should first write out as many benefit statements as you can think of.  Then walk around the room for a minute and write at least 3 more.  This exercise alone cuts through our natural tendency to write only superficial benefit statements. By the time you get past the first 5 or so, your benefits will start becoming stronger and stronger.
2. Solve a Problem.  As you write this list, think about your product as either a solution or an opportunity. What kind of pain will this widget take away? What new opportunities will it open up?
3. Features Schmeatures.  Get past the tendency to write about features but think we are writing about benefits. This happens when we are so close to the product or service that our minds translate a feature into the benefit it was designed to bring about. For example, 10,000 ATM locations means that people have ready access to cash to a banker. But to everyone else, that leap in imagination takes additional explanation. Fix this by tagging each statement with a sentence like, “and what this means to you, is ……”
4. Who Cares.  Approach your product or service from the point of view of your targeted customer  Write out a long list with sentences that begin with, “this is for someone who wants ______ . Looking at your product from the perspective of what the customer wants opens up more and more insights that you can easily turn into benefit statements.
5. Peel the Onion.  Take these benefit statements you’ve already written and go one or more levels deeper. Let’s take the ATM example again. Now your want sentence might be, “for the person who wants convenient access to money when they need it.” Or, “for the person who wants to be able to pay for the unexpected costs of life as they arrive and minimize their hassle in doing so.” 
6. Make Them Laugh.  Remember to write emotional benefits as well.  A common tendancy is to think only of the practical types of benefits, but certain emotions and feelings can be just as important to the customer as the “what it will do for me” practical ones. In your list of sentences describing “for the person who wants _____,” be sure to include ”for the person who wants to feel _____.”  Using the ATM example again you might choose to write, “for the person who wants to feel secure that they can get out of a tight financial spot if they need to.”
7. Make Them Cry.  A good benefit statement can sometimes be a negative. Often the things a person doesn’t want or wants to avoid are even more persuasive than those that are stated in the positive. Don’t forget to include benefit statements that clearly define what a person does not want in your list of benefits.

Need help with your message.  Remember the old adage of selling the sizzle instead of the steak.  Or since you may not sell steaks give me a call and I’ll walk you through it.