Copywriting - When To Stress Features Not Benefits
In copywriting, it's a good rule of thumb to stress benefits over features - what's in it for the punter rather than what your product or service consists of. I say a good rule of thumb, but for a lot of people it's the be all and end all.
However, there are many exceptions.
For instance, if you're selling to an expert. He or she will know the benefits of what you're selling inside out, and may well be more impressed by the features - the cost, the material and so forth.
It's the same with aficionados, although for them it's often the tech specs that set their pulses racing. Think of the computer geek practically wetting himself at the thought of having half a zillion trilobytes more hard drive (or whatever), or the petrolhead thrilled at having x more horsepower at his disposal.
In fact with something like cars you often have to emphasise the features over the benefits. The law allows you to say that the 4.6 litre engine will take you from 0 to 60 in 4.8 seconds, with a maximum speed of 185mph. The (unstated) benefit is that this will permit you to be like a grand prix driver with a bigger, better babe magnet.
Like the experts and the enthusiasts, people in specific professions will often be more concerned with features than benefits. Engineers and scientists, for example, may need to know exactly what your product can do, down to the nearest tenth of a millimetre or millilitre.
But what of the ordinary joe public? When are the occasions you should plump for features rather than benefits when talking to them?
If you're selling a luxury item, describing little details (with no particular benefits in themselves) is a good way of conveying quality and rarity.
And if you're buying something tangible, there are often practicalities that need to be addressed. For instance, whether a sofa will squeeze though the front door, or whether a printer will fit on a shelf. To be fair, these are usually only secondary considerations - but they do need to be addressed.
You also need to be careful when you're selling complicated products which have similar benefits. Here, continually emphasising the same benefit can hinder clarity and readability. For instance, banks and building societies typically offer several kinds of financial protection for their customers (personal insurance, credit card insurance, purchase protection insurance, and so on).
The benefit in each case translates to something like 'peace of mind'. Nothing wrong with that, except when it's repeated every time any protection feature is mentioned. This makes for unnecessarily long and boring copy. (There are only so many ways you can succinctly convey "peace of mind".)
It's the same for other business areas. If you're an internet provider, it's generally better to stress "free parental controls" or "free anti-virus software" - terms which are widely understood. Emphasising 'free peace of mind" or "peace of mind is included", with the explanation for this underneath, can be counter-productive.
As well as the problem of copy length and repetition, there's also a danger that it's actually conveying less information and not more, given that people often skim read copy and focus on subheads.
So benefits don't always trump features. Something that's worth remembering if you want the...erm...peace of mind of knowing that your communications are working hard for you.
© Peter Wise
Peter Wise is a freelance copywriter in London. As well as being a website copywriter he also writes ads, direct mail, brochures, newsletter articles and press releases. More details are at Ideaswise Freelance Copywriting
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