Tell me about features, not benefits

As an entrepreneur with a software engineering background, I can see both sides of this debate. Yes, benefits are important, but as a user, I also want to know what a product actually does. It's frustrating when a website is full of vague marketing language and doesn't clearly explain what the product does. As a developer, I don't want to waste time trying to figure out what a product actually does.

On the other hand, it's true that benefits are what really sell a product. As a business owner, I understand the importance of communicating the value proposition of my product in a clear and concise way. But there's a fine line between emphasizing benefits and being too vague about what the product actually does. I think it's important to strike a balance between the two and provide enough information to help potential customers understand what the product does while also clearly communicating its value.

Sell on features if your customers are considering you vs. a competitor(CRM, Email, Website, etc)

Sell on benefits if your customers are choosing between your product vs. doing nothing(a new email follow up tool, a WordPress plugin that increases site speed, etc)

Some people are looking for "cloud monitoring service", others for "how to make sure my website is up". Know your niche.

While I appreciate your attempt to take a contrarian view, your argument is flawed.

The issue with the benefit copy in your example isn't in the strategy of leading with benefits; it's in the execution. You can't assume that all benefits are presented as generically as your example.

For contrast, have a look at the first ads for the ipod. It puts the benefit in specific, concrete terms with "1,000 songs in your pocket." That's much more effective than "digital music player" would have been.

It's also a mistake to assume that focusing on benefits excludes features. The two work hand in hand. The features are the pay off to the benefits that add credibility to the claims.

Sure coming up with effective benefit wording is much harder than simply finding and stating the basic benefit. But testing has proven over and over that it is worth the time and effort, because it does produce better results than merely presenting features.

Here are some tips that may help.

Instead of thinking of benefits as Why and features as What, think of it as people focused vs. product focused. The feature is what the product does. The benefit is what that means to the prospect. It adds context.

Picture a prospect when writing your copy. Think about his aspirations and pain points. Use wording that is relevant to that prospect in ways they can easily picture.

Keep asking yourself "so what" to dig past the generic advantages and into the true benefits that are going to move the needle.

An important piece of context is how well-known a company is.

Salesforce doesn't need to tell people it's a CRM, everyone already knows, so its marketing focuses on aspirational benefits.

But if you're a brand new startup CRM, you'd better tell people "I'm a CRM that does X, Y and Z" so they know what you do and why you're different.

Thanks for sharing. My take is that features need to map neatly to the outcomes. Phil… https://abitgamey.substack.com/p/our-product-led-growth

Really, it depends on the product.

I work for a b2b edtech saas company ($25.1MM ARR) and we're actually finding the opposite. We're finding that selling our Learning Management System is much easier if we focus on the benefits rather than the features. We've taken the Jobs-to-be-done approach and aligned those jobs to the benefits we can provide with our product. Talking about specific features in the sales calls actually bogs things down as we find prospects get hung up on what specific features can and can't do. Having feature boxes checked no makes it easier for them to dismiss the sale.

My side project is a developer tool, and you can bet devs will want to focus on the features. Will report back in a number of weeks after we get user interviews done, though!

I checked your website.
Honestly, it took me a lot of time to understand what your product is about.
If it wouldn't be open-source I would leave it after 10 seconds. I think this is the only reason why you talk about the features, not the benefits.

As a entrepeneaur I sometimes lose focus of the most important factor of products being the end user

This works great for those who are actively looking to buy the solution that you sell.

Problem is that this represents a tiny percentage of your target market - like around 1%.

These "active buyers" are super hard to find (or expensive to reach with paid advertising) and so most businesses struggle to get in front of them consistently.

And, even if they can, they eventually hit a point where they can't convert any more of them into customers - this is why startups get stuck at a certain MRR.

Growth requires businesses to be able to effectively sell to the "not actively looking to buy right now" group and selling only a product makes that impossible.

We build a chrome extension for summarizing articles with a little help of ai

Please build websites that make it clear what they're advertising. So many websites are so vague I leave the page more confused than when I entered.

On our website, we provide complete information about Culver’s Menu, including prices, hours, and location. We will give you information from the official site of Culver's Restaurant. Visit our website to see <a href="https://culvers-menu-prices.info/">Culver’s Menu Prices</a>

I think the headline can say virtually anything you want as long as it gets the visitor's attention. Then you can follow it up immediately with a description that explains clearly what you're offering.

Here's what we use on our site:

Headline: It's Time to Ditch the Old Analytics

Description: Independent Analytics is a free WordPress analytics plugin that's easy to use, won't slow down your site, and is fully GDPR-compliant out-of-box.

Thanks for sharing!

Developers are especially sensitive to vague language when evaluating products.
Exactly, and I would include many other experienced buyers too. We've gotten so used to marketing copy over promising or making super vague claims, that our bullsh$t detectors are on high-alert when evaluating a product with a use case in mind. We assume you are lying to us if you don't specifically say what the features are. At least include an easy to find feature spec, doesn't have to be top and center, but somewhere.

Even simple and obvious products like t-shirts always include a feature list, like sizing, material, and care instructions.

A bit of both is good. Just be succinct.

Even then, some features are so obvious in the benefit they provide that it's unecessary to explain the benefit.

Mainly what I did with Evoke. For example, our pay as you go vs subscription model's benefit is obvious to those who don't want to "waste" unused generation credits

i think features is based on opinion some may like than feature some may not like but benefit is positive for all.

got some good points from this post.

I really appreciate it. Thanks for sharing such an excellent resource.

Interesting read, I agree

Completely agree with this as a consumer. It makes total sense. Great write-up!

A really interesting read and glad you used some examples of what each one is and how it looks in practice, much easier to visualize it. Great share!

The benefits should never come from you.

That's self-praise, and self-praise is no praise.

The benefits should come from testimonials and reviews.