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 (more…)