The ideology behind why features tell, but benefits sell

The ideology behind why features tell, but benefits sell



Do you think there's any truth to this? Do features only tell, and benefits sell?  Well, let's see why we should focus on benefits rather than features as the great marketing wizards, David Ogilvy and Steve Jobs proved to be the best examples leveraging this method. 

Features vs Benefits



As you know, features describe the attributes of a product or a service. It answers the “What" - exploring the functionalities and persuading prospects about what it does. On the other hand, benefits sell the result. It explains the “Why" - focusing on the result 'that customers' yield.

When pitching a product, getting a little obsessed with the product's features, and explaining it in detail is natural. And we're not saying it's wrong to position the features that distinguish your product from your competitors. But before that, it's important to think about what end-users want. Everyone is looking for simple solutions that could solve problems, and make things better. Benefits convince the users to listen to your pitch, as it is more focused on providing them solutions to their business problems.

So, where does the feature description fit in your narrative? Once convincing your audience about the benefits, showcasing the features intrigues and engages them. Let's assume you are looking for better ways to store and automate your customer information. You find a descriptive blog suggesting efficient ways to manage your leads data. It also gives a footnote about how a CRM could solve your problem. Now that you've got the solution, you start to compare different CRM solutions and their features to see which best fits your business. It applies to your target audience as well. By first convincing your audience briefing the benefits and then leveraging the features closing a deal proves to be an agile method to win more sales.  

Feature and benefits of iPod



In 2001, Apple launched its iPod, the mp3 song player that changed the way we listened to music. Steve Jobs introduced the iPod as, "1000 songs in your pocket". Had he emphasized more on the feature stating, “We are presenting iPod - the largest storage, mp3 digital media song player", it wouldn't address the "Why', and it wouldn't have caught the imagination of the consumers the way it did. The pitch rightly positioned the benefit, making the product a huge success. More than 400 million iPods sold and transformed Apple into one of the most valuable companies in the world. 

How to reposition features as benefits?

So far, we understood the importance of prioritizing benefits over features. Now, we will see how to transform features into benefits. 

'Talk' to your customers through your writing

 “If you’re trying to persuade people to do something, or buy something, it seems to me you should use their language, the language they use every day, the language in which they think. We try to write in the vernacular” - David Ogilvy.
​
The father of advertising, David Ogilvy was one of the most successful advertisers during the 60s. His notions regarding marketing and advertising played an incredible role in promoting big brands, and are relevant to this date. He emphasized that understanding your customer pain points helps you to talk the way your customers talk. When you identify their problems, you can easily draft content that is more relatable to them. It addresses their needs. When you tailor your content to your customer's pain points, you wouldn't have to chase after them, they will come to you. To identify their challenges, here are some platforms you could explore:

Market survey - By surveying your target customers, you directly interact with them to find out what is lacking and how you can slide in the gap.

Review sites - Your own user community site and other relevant review sites like Yelp, Trip Advisor, and Am  track customer complaints. 

Social media - Social media is a powerful tool to draw public’s attention. Perform social listening to check if there are any customer complaints about your competitors. 

Keeping a tab on some of the platforms mentioned above will help you to understand your customer pain points and lets you optimize the sales pitch that best resonates with them. Gathering this data is only the first step. Deep analysis into niche areas using these data points enables you to profile and pitch to your customers better. 

Ask so what

To 'talk' to your customers through your writing, just ask, "So what?",  a simple yet powerful question that flips your features into benefits. This strategy aids in simplifying the content and answers the purpose of the product. Let’s see some of the examples:

Mp3 song player with 5 gigabytes storage
So what?
1000 songs in your pocket

SEO page optimization
So what?
Rank first in google
 
Portable wireless BlueTooth speaker
So what?
Carry the speaker anywhere you go
 
1.5 ton, 3 Star spilt AC
So what?
Bring Antarctica to your room
 
Analog, water-resistant watch
So what?
Be playful without removing your watch

When your content passes the 'so-what' test, it indicates that your draft is customer-friendly and focused. Feature or benefit is not the dispute. Both should be used wisely to craft a selling content. 

    • Sticky Posts

    • 10 simple e-commerce marketing tips to boost sales

      Congratulations! You've finally set up that e-commerce store you've been thinking about for a long time. Hopefully it wasn't too difficult. Even if it was, the effort will be totally worth it when you start seeing some orders come through. Now that the store is live, let's take a look at some marketing tips you can apply for sales growth. 1. Avoid cart abandonment If you've ever shopped online, you might have added a product to the cart but then decided not to purchase it. This is known as cart abandonment.

    • Marketing in a post COVID-19 world!

      Consumers across countries are increasingly spending more time on a wide variety of digital activities, right from online grocery shopping, to video conferencing, to tele-medicine. There is a good chance that you performed one or more of the following activities during this lockdown, thanks to COVID 19: Cooked a meal Made a TikTok Video Signed up for a remote learning session Consulted a doctor online (or ordered medicines online) Shopped for groceries online A study by Hunter, a food and beverage

    • Inbound Marketing 101: The Foundational Blocks of Inbound Marketing Strategy

      According to a behaviour survey, 68% of the buyers use sources such as blogs to evaluate the product even before considering it. Before buying a product, we do a lot of research to learn more about the product through communities, blogs, social media,

    • How Zylker doubled their webinar registrations!

      Webinars are good educational resources to gather qualified leads for your product. But what if your visitors are dropping off from your webinar landing page without signing up? What more could you do to convert visitors into registrants? This is the

    • The ideology behind why features tell, but benefits sell

      Do you think there's any truth to this? Do features only tell, and benefits sell?  Well, let's see why we should focus on benefits rather than features as the great marketing wizards, David Ogilvy and Steve Jobs proved to be the best examples leveraging

    • Recent Topics

    • Can I remove or divert certain contacts from an active Campaigns workflow?

      I have created a workflow in Zoho Campaigns, which sends different emails, once contacts have been added to a mailing list. To choose which email to send to the contacts, there are conditions, which divert contacts based on their company type and their company size. There was a subsection of this workflow, where company size wasn't selected correctly, and some contacts have been sent down the wrong path and received the wrong email. The workflow contains a reminder loop and a further series of emails.

    • How to map fields from Zoho Recruit to Zoho People

      I've got these fields from my Job Offer that I'm trying to map to the Work information fields in Zoho People, but they arent showing up. For example, how do I get the department name field (in the job post) to map to the work information field in Zoho

    • UTM in zoho campaigns

      Helloo everybody!!! Someone know how IF ZOHO CAMPAIGNS has UTM for tracking the url of any campaigns. thank u

    • Full Context of Zoho CRM Records for Zia in Zoho Desk for efficient AI Usage

      Hello everyone, I have a question regarding the use of Zia in Zoho Desk in combination with CRM data. Is it possible to automatically feed the complete context of a CRM record into Zia, so that it can generate automated and highly accurate responses for

    • Knowledge base printing

      I saw a posting about printing the knowledge base as I was looking for the answer, but we would like the ability to print out the entire knowledge base with a click, keeping the same organization format.   Bonus would include an index of keywords and

    • Search not working!

      I have items in my notebook tagged but when I search for a tag nothing comes up! Any fix for this?

    • Zoho Books | Product updates | January 2026

      Hello users, We’ve rolled out new features and enhancements in Zoho Books. From e-filing Form 1099 directly with the IRS to corporation tax support, explore the updates designed to enhance your bookkeeping experience. E-File Form 1099 Directly With the

    • Updates for Zoho Campaigns: Merge tag, footer, and autoresponder migration

      Hello everyone, We'd like to inform you of some upcoming changes with regard to Zoho Campaigns. We understand that change can be difficult, but we're dedicated to ensuring a smooth transition while keeping you all informed and engaged throughout the process.

    • Drag 'n' Drop Fields to a Sub-Form and "Move Field To" Option

      Hi, I would like to be able to move fields from the Main Page to a Sub-Form or from a Sub-Form to either the Main Page or another Sub-Form. Today if you change the design you have to delete and recreate every field, not just move them. Would be nice to

    • Sharing my portal URL with clients outside the project

      Hi I need help making my project public for anyone to check on my task. I'm a freelance artist and I use trello to keep track on my client's projects however I wanted to do an upgrade. Went on here and so far I'm loving it. However, I'm having an issue sharing my url to those to see progress. They said they needed an account to access my project. How do I fix this? Without them needing an account.

    • How do i integrate google analytics to Zoho Campaigns?

      Looking to track Zoho Traffic from email Current topic is outdated

    • How do teams manage meeting follow-ups across Zoho tools?

      We’re using Zoho tools for collaboration and tracking, but managing meeting notes, action items, and follow-ups across teams is still challenging. Curious how others are handling this within Zoho workflows. Are there best practices or integrations that

    • Customize Colors used on graphs and charts according to users desire.

      It would be great if we could customize the graph's colors as we see fit. I hate that yellow is always the default color!

    • Let us view and export the full price books data from CRM

      I quote out of CRM, some of my clients have specialised pricing for specific products - therefore we use Price Books to manage these special prices. I can only see the breakdown of the products listed in the price book and the specialised pricing for

    • Mejoras urgentes para ZOHO MEETING

      Tengo unos meses usando Zoho Meeting. En general, es buena, pero hay cosas vitales que no logra cumplir con mínima calidad. 1) Calidad de audio y video: urge mejoras. Audio con retraso, imagen borrosa, mal recorte de silueta con fondos virtuales. Además,

    • Multiple header in the quote table???

      Hello, Is it possible in Zoho CRM to add multiple headers or sections within the Quote product table, so that when the quote is printed it shows separate sections (for example “Products” and “Services”)? To clarify, I’m asking because: This does not appear

    • Saving sent email campaign as PDF

      I'm looking to add all campaigns sent to an archive folder in sharepoint. Is there anyway to accomplish this in Zoho Flow ? I'm falling at the first hurdle ... can I automatically save a sent campaign as a PDF to a folder location ?

    • Exporting All Custom Functions in ZohoCRM

      Hello, All I've been looking for a way to keep about 30 functions that I have written in Zoho CRM updated in my own repository to use elsewhere in other instances. A github integration would be great, but a way to export all custom functions or any way

    • Conditional Layouts On Multi Select Field

      How we can use Conditional Layouts On Multi Select Field field? Please help.

    • Appreciation to Qntrl Support Team

      We are writing this topic to appreciate the outstanding level of support from Qntrl Team. We have been using Qntrl since 2022 after shifting from another similar platform. Since we joined Qntrl, the team has shown a high level of professionalism, support,

    • How can I hide "My Requests" and "Marketplace" icon from the side menu

      Hello everybody, We recently started using the new Zoho CRM for Everyone. How can I hide "My Requests" and "Marketplace" from the side menu? We don't use these features at the moment, and I couldn't find a way to disable or remove them. Best regards,

    • Whatsapp Integration on Zoho Campaign

      Team: Can the messages from Zoho Campaign delivered through Whatsapp... now customers no longer are active on email, but the entire campaign module is email based.... when will it be available on whatsapp.... are there any thirdparty providers who can

    • Mandatory Field - but only at conversion

      Hello! We use Zoho CRM and there are times where the "Lead Created Date & Time" field isn't populated into a "Contractor" (Account is the default phrase i believe). Most of my lead tracking is based on reading the Lead Created field above, so it's important

    • Different Task Layouts for Subtasks

      I was wondering how it would be possible for a subtask to have a different task layout to the parent task.

    • Enable Free External Collaboration on Notecards in Zoho Notebook

      Hi Zoho Notebook Team, I would like to suggest a feature enhancement regarding external collaboration in Zoho Notebook. Currently, we can share notes with external users, and they are able to view the content without any issue. However, when these external

    • Using data fields in Zoho Show presentations to extract key numbers from Zia insights based on a report created

      Is it possible to use data fields in Zoho Show presentations along with Zoho Analytics to extract key numbers from Zia insights based on a report created? For example, using this text below: (note that the numbers in bold would be from Zia Insights) Revenue

    • Free webinar: AI-powered agreement management with Zoho Sign

      Hi there! Does preparing an agreement feel like more work than actually signing it? You're definitely not alone. Between drafting the document, managing revisions, securing internal approvals, and rereading clauses to make sure everything still reflects

    • WhatsApp Channels in Zoho Campaigns

      Now that Meta has opened WhatsApp Channels globally, will you add it to Zoho Campaigns? It's another top channel for marketing communications as email and SMS. Thanks.

    • CRM For Everyone - Bring Back Settings Tile View

      I've been using CRM for Everyone since it was in early access and I just can't stand the single list settings menu down the left-hand side. It takes so much longer to find the setting I need. Please give users the option to make the old sytle tile view

    • Lets have Dynamics 365 integration with Zohobooks

      Lets have Dynamics 365 integration with Zohobooks

    • Add notes in spreadsheet view

      It would be great if we could Add/edit notes in the spreadsheet view of contacts/leads. This would enable my sales teams to greatly increase their number of calls. Also viewing the most recent note in the Contact module would also be helpful.

    • Opening balances - Accounts Receivable and Payable

      Our accounting year starts on 1st August 2013 and I have a Trial Balance as at that date, including Accounts Receivableand Accounts Payable balances, broken down by each customer and supplier. Q1 - do I show my opening balance date as 31st July 2013 or

    • Cancel Subscription

      Hi , Im want to cancel my account but without success please help me to do it

    • Making an email campaign into a Template

      I used a Zoho Campaign Template to create an email. Now I want to use this email and make it a new template, but this seems to be not possible. Am I missing something?

    • Direct Access and Better Search for Zoho Quartz Recordings

      Hi Zoho Team, We would like to request a few enhancements to improve how Zoho Quartz recordings are accessed and managed after being submitted to Zoho Support. Current Limitation: After submitting a Quartz recording, the related Zoho Support ticket displays

    • Multiple Cover Letters

      We are using the staffing firm edition of Recruit and we have noticed that candidates cannot add more than one cover letter. This is a problem as they might be applying for multiple jobs on our career site and when we submit their application to a client,

    • URGENT: Deluge issue with Arabic text Inbox

      Dear Deluge Support, We are facing an issue that started on 12/Feb/2026 with custom functions written using Deluge within Qntrl platform. Currently, custom functions do not accept Arabic content; it is replaced with (???) characters. Scenario 1: If we

    • File Conversion from PDF to JPG/PNG

      Hi, I have a question did  anyone every tried using custom function to convert a PDF file to JPG/PNG format? Any possibility by using the custom function to achieve this within zoho apps.  I do know there are many third parties API provide this with

    • Now in Zoho One: Orchestrate customer journeys across apps with Zoho CommandCenter

      Hello Zoho One Community! We’re excited to introduce Zoho CommandCenter as a new capability available in Zoho One. For the whole customer journey As Zoho One customers adopt more apps across sales, marketing, finance, and support, a common challenge emerges:

    • annualy customer report

      we need a report per customer that looks like this invoic number cleaning laundry repair management 01 january xxx euro xx euro xx euro xxx euro 02 february xxx euro xxx euro x euro xxxx euro and so on the years 12 months is that possible to make and

    • Next Page