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

    • How can i force the user to select a project when creating an invoice ?

      Hello I tried all the ways that i know , but no way is able to stop creating an invoice without project.

    • Sales

      1/ How can I make a discount on invoice exmple : invoice 5,100 le , custmar pay 5000 and I need to make this 100 le as a discount , how can i make it ?! 2/ Is thare any report can make me match my company’s balance with the customer’s balance?

    • Include Project Hours when Creating Estimates from Projects

      Hi Currently, in Books, you can create estimates from Projects by inserting tasks that pull both the task and the hourly charge rate. But it doesn't pull the budgeted hours for the task, so you manually have to remember the number of hours for a given

    • acc

      Regularly sending statements to customers is an imperative part of many business processes as it helps foster strong customer relationships and provides timely guidance on pay//

    • South African Payment Gateways

      Since the "Demise" of Wave many South African users have moved over to Zoho and yet for years users have been requesting Integration with a South African Payment Gateway to no avail. Payfast was the most commonly requested gateway as it supports recurring

    • CRM Implementation

      I need to implement Zoho CRM. Is there a useful user manual available to guide me through the implementation?

    • Zoho Social integration with Zoho Flow

      Is there any plans for Zoho Social integration with Zoho Flow?

    • Marketing 2.0 has been a catastrophe

      Anyone else having significant issues with their link between their CRM and Marketing automation since moving to version 2.0? We had an easy flow for triggering leads in the CRM to journeys in Marketing Automation but now nothing seems to work properly.

    • Cannot average "Duration (Time)" from Pick List History Tracking in Reports

      Okay, let's say I have a custom module. In this custom module I have a pick-list named "Status" with "New", "In-Progress", "Completed" values. I also have turned ON pick-list history tracking and chose "Time" to track the duration in (instead of "Calendar

    • Customer Statement Template

      Hi. how can i add order number "customer LPO number" in the customer statement. regards

    • Authorize.Net Update: Disable Transaction IP Velocity Filter to Avoid Payment Failures

      Update: The Authorize.Net integration was updated on November 20, 2024. To prevent recurring transaction failures, we recommend disabling the Transaction IP Velocity Filter at the earliest. We’re updating the Authorize.Net integration in Zoho Books on

    • Need to send a single email to up to 20 recipients

      I want to send a single email to ~16 or 20 recipients. It appears that I cannot do this in Zoho email as it gets flagged as unusual activity. I need to be able to communicate with this group on a regular basis. What am I missing that Zoho doesn't allow

    • Whatsapp Limitation Questions

      Good day, I would like to find out about the functionality or possibility of all the below points within the Zoho/WhatsApp integration. Will WhatsApp buttons ever be possible in the future? Will WhatsApp Re-directs to different users be possible based

    • Unable to Schedule One-to-One Emails in Zoho CRM

      Hi everyone, I’m using the Zoho CRM Professional Edition and facing an issue with scheduling one-to-one emails directly from CRM. While I can send immediate emails without any problem, I don’t see an option to schedule these emails for a later time. I’ve

    • Canvas Detail View Related List Sorting

      Hello, I am having an issue finding a way to sort a related list within a canvas detail view. I have sorted the related list on the page layout associated with the canvas view, but that does not transfer to the canvas view. What am I missing?

    • Repeatable Fields/Sections in Zoho CRM

      Hi Zoho Team, We have a module in CRM named "Clients". We would like to know whether it is possible to have a feature enables us to have repeatable sections in our clients' profiles? For example, if we customized a section in the clients' profiles named

    • Zoho Analytics: Requests for view access

      Hello, We have a user that might request access to a certain view, report etc. However this request for access is being sent to different admins within the workspace, is is possible to set who the "approver" is of these requests? If not what are the rules

    • Boolean Fields in Mail Merge Displaying as Checkmarks

      I'm really liking the new mail merge functionality. It's replaced the Zoho Sign extension for us. One problem I've seen is that boolean operators (i.e. Checkbox fields) in CRM merge as "True" or "False". This looks a little ugly in my final document — is there a way I can get those to display as checkboxes?

    • Formula in Sub Form

      Hello - I have created a sub-form and the data is going to be insurance policy information. However some of the policy amounts are based on a percentage of a main coverage. For example, Debris removal coverage is 5% of the main dwelling policy. Is there

    • Email alias already exist

      Hello, I'm getting an error message the email alias already exist when attempting to add 2 email addresses. The emails are associated with an account I deleted. I started a new account and need to add them back to get 1 email at each. I have an open ticket

    • Migrate emails from a shared mail box to a private mail box

      How is possible migrate a shared mail box if the migration tool require a password, and the shared mail dosent have ?

    • Support poor service

      I just wanted Zoho support to give me some more concrete answers. I’m facing SMTP error issues, and they told me that the South American IP was experiencing problems, but they didn’t provide an estimate for when it would be resolved. Now my company is

    • Zoho say my domain seems to be already associated with another account

      I created a zoho account for try my domain mail configuration. When I want to add my domain in this page https://mailadmin.zoho.com/hosting?plan=free then this shows an error that is "This domain is already associated with this account a*****n@f*****."

    • Incorrect Device Time

      Hi On my windows laptop I can't sign into Zoho mail due to "incorrect device time". I'm in Toronto, Canada. How can this be resolved?

    • Get user images by API

      Hi For our internal management software, I want to retrieve user photos via REST API: curl --location --request GET 'https://profile.zoho.com/file?fs=thumb&ID=<zoid>' \ --header 'Authorization: Zoho-oauthtoken <token>' The token has `profile.userphoto.ALL`,

    • Depois de 1 ano não consigo receber e-mail

      Consigo enviar e-mails mas não estou recebendo nenhum e-mail isso aconteceu pontualmente após eu completar 1 ano de uso. Me ajudem por favor

    • Submitted form URL

      I am using the feature "Include a link to allow respondents to edit their responses" for the first time. This URL is included in the email sent to the user after they press Submit. If a form is Saved, there is a section called Partially Saved Entries

    • Function for Emails tranfer from Lead to Deal

      Hi Due to the fact that my Deals conversion needs to be done in 2 ways - depending on the fact if those records already exists or not - resources in fields are different. I am making function control conversation for Leads but I have problem with transferring

    • Create a new immigration service- Similar to immigration law software

      It will be good if you can build a new service. Data will be pulled from the employee form. Then automatically users should be able to complete immigration forms like I 129, ETA 9089, ETA 9035 E, G- 28, W4, I 9 PDF forms and then be able to send for signature with Zoho sign. Immigration Softwares like docketwise can be used for ideas. The advantage with this it sits within Zoho people and employees don't have to feed data in another system

    • Accessibility in Zoho CRM: Not just a feature—a way to empower

      For instructions on setting up these controls, please check this help document: Configuring accessibility controls. Hello everyone, Today (December 3, 2024), on the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, we begin our journey towards a CRM that

    • Zoho Meeting very bad video quality

      Hello, I need 1080p HD on my Zoho Meeting as explained here: Low Resolution/Quality Video (zoho.com) Currently, video quality is lagging with 400mb internet which is not acceptable for my business. My 1080p 60FPS webcam performs well on platforms like

    • Contacts with Deals not appearing.

      What: I simply want to see all of the contacts that are tied to an open deal Problem: In Contacts Module > When filtering on Contacts with an open deal, Zoho only shows some Contacts instead of all. Details: More specifically, I should have ~200 contacts

    • Auto-sync field of lookup value

      This feature has been requested many times in the discussion Field of Lookup Announcement and this post aims to track it separately. At the moment the value of a 'field of lookup' is a snapshot but once the parent lookup field is updated the values diverge.

    • CRM limit reached: only 2 subforms can be created

      we recently stumbled upon a limit of 2 subforms per module. while we found a workaround on this occasion, only 2 subforms can be quite limiting in an enterprise setting. @Ishwarya SG I've read about imminent increase of other components (e.

    • Version of Cliq included with Zoho One and Limitations

      I'm confused by the information presented in the application detail page of Zoho One. I'm a solopreneur with a single-seat Zoho One Enterprise license and I need to communicate externally .. extensively. The plan details page suggests channels are limited to 100 members. Whereas the pricing plan comparison page on the Cliq marketing site says 2500 for enterprise level.  If it's 100... that's going to kill my use case as it is my understanding that external customers can only be communicated with

    • Resubmit for Approval for Zoho Books Module in CRM

      The integration between CRM and Books is great, but it is incomplete in many areas. One of them is if an estimate/invoice/sales order is rejected, the users in CRM cannot resubmit it for approval. Let's face it, sales people will mostly be in CRM and

    • Upload edited meeting recording for attendees to download

      Hi Would it be possible to let meeting organisers upload an edited version of the meeting recording? Usage case: most of us probably start a meeting 15 minutes before the official start time. It would be nice to trim that dead time off the recording.

    • Why does the embed feature within the article editor seem to be not functional?

      I would like to embed media into an article, but that feature seems to be non-functioning. Am I doing something wrong? to clarify, I do not want to create an article by embedding. I want to embed media into an article I have created in a manual.

    • Get all fields using COQL

      Hi Is it possible to get all the fields of a record using COQL?. Something similar to select * from Accounts in SQL.

    • Mapping a new Ticket in Zoho Desk to an Account or Deal in Zoho CRM manually

      Is there any way for me to map an existing ticket in Zoho desk to an account or Deal within Zoho CRM? Sometimes people use different email to put in a ticket than the one that we have in the CRM, but it's still the same person. We would like to be able

    • Next Page