One of the oldest principles in direct response marketing and copywriting is to translate your features into benefits.
Here are a couple of ways to describe this.
First, John Carlton asks us “What does the product or service do for the human being buying it?”
In other words, don’t just talk about what the product or service DOES, which is what most business owners do (Let’s take a dry cleaning business as an example) –
“We provide same day dry cleaning service!”
Yawn.
Rather, talk about what it does for the PERSON READING YOUR AD –
“We provide same day dry cleaning service! Which means you can drop your clothes off on the way to work in the morning, and by the time you’re done with your day, you can pick them up again, freshly pressed and steam-cleaned.”
See the difference?
The second example to get your mind wrapped around this concept, is David Garfinkel’s electric fan example.
Imagine an electric fan on a hot day.
When you push the button on this fan, the cool air begins blowing on you, right?
Well your product or service is the fan.
The blades on the fan are the features of your product or service.
But the COOL AIR blowing in you are the BENEFITS of your product or service.
Does that make sense?
Sell the cool air, not the blades of the fan, or the fan itself.
That is the power of speaking in benefits, not features.
And you do this by painting vivid pictures of how your product or service will help your prospect save time, save money, make money, be healthier, be sexier, etc…
Tomorrow I’ll have an interesting case study or two about translating features into benefits that will help you in your own copy.
-James D. Lee
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