Features vs. Benefits: How Features and Benefits Promote Sales

Features describe the elements of a product, or what your product is or has. Examples of features could include the ambidextrous handles on scissors, the various ink options in a pen, or a spending tracker in a personal finance app. Features matter because they respond to what customers need based on specific criteria they are seeking.

Studying consumer needs helps you come up with and perfect the features of a product. Test the features rigorously in the real world, and seek testimonials from prospective customers. When creating messaging around the product, clearly describe the unique features, and use these descriptions judiciously during the copywriting and advertising stages so the target audience knows exactly what the product does.

Benefits describe what outcomes, impacts, or results a customer can expect when using your product. Broadly speaking, one of the key benefits of your product should be wellness, safety, or pleasure in a customer’s life. Benefits identify potential customers’ pain points and respond to them; they solve problems. A thick wool coat, for example, will keep you warm through the winter. Showcasing compelling benefits is a crucial part of creating marketing messaging—a customer may not care about the exact material of the coat, but they will care about being comfortable in the cold.

The line between features and benefits can blur, so knowing what makes them different is key to unlocking how your marketing efforts communicate the value of a product. For example, an umbrella’s features may include a plastic handle, pink cloth, and a four-foot wingspan; its benefits will be keeping you dry on rainy days and shaded on sunny ones. Features speak to a product’s physical attributes (what the product consists of), while benefits highlight its effects (how you feel while or after using it).

Understanding how to use features and benefits is particularly important during a new product launch. Learn how to create compelling marketing materials using features and benefits to highlight selling points.

• Appeal to target markets: Some buyers may be more interested in the features of your product; others may be more concerned with its benefits. Segment, and play to both. A storage device, for example, may hold one gigabyte of data; that is a feature you can market. Or, you can try taking the benefits route, targeting musicians and saying that the drive can hold 1,000 songs. Segment your lists and market accordingly.
• Perform A/B tests: Salespeople can play off of multiple angles of a product. For a yogurt brand, you may emphasize features, sharing the product’s healthy ingredients, or you may emphasize benefits, highlighting how the yogurt is easy to eat on the go. A/B test your copy to see which performs better.
• Identify pain points: Know what your customers need and whether their needs align with what features or benefits can provide. Surveys, market research, and other information-gathering techniques can help inform not only what kind of product you offer, but how you display and market it to increase your bottom line.

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