Features & Benefits Don't Sell Themselves

If you’ve been doing B2B marketing for a while, you’ve probably heard the phrase “features and benefits” far too many times.

I heard it myself dozens of times in my first career in the defense industry.

Looking back, I realize now how wrong the attention on features and benefits really was and still is.

Let me explain with a short story…

Before I transitioned to digital marketing and copywriting, I was an engineer.

My degrees were in aerospace engineering and I supported Navy R&D programs for almost 20 years.

During that time, I was fortunate enough and honored to work on several projects involving the SEAL teams.

For security reasons that long outlast my time spent in that career, I can’t get into details of the project…

But one particular phrase from a project briefing has stuck with me.

Upon delivery of a particular piece of hardware, we were seated in the executive briefing room of the Admiral of the Pacific Fleet with the Admiral, his chief of staff and the SEAL team all seated around the table with us.

If you’ve never sat on the other side of the table to deliver a project result to someone who can kill you in a number of different ways...

Well, you can’t imagine the stress we were under to deliver on the project goals.

During the presentation, our program manager was rattling off a long list of features and benefits, including a significant weight reduction.

When he finally asked for feedback from the team members, they said something along the lines of this…

"All of that stuff is great, but you missed a key point… every pound you save us is an extra pound of ammo we can carry with us.”

That, my friends, is what we call a “deeper benefit”…

It’s the underlying and much more meaningful result that comes about from all of those other benefits we’re so used to listing in promotional materials.

Since then, I’ve always attempted to dig deeper into every product and every promotion to the deeper benefits that matter to the ideal customer audience.

So What?

Not impressed by that? Not sure what the “deeper benefit” is yet?

Deeper benefits allow us as marketers to dive into what really matters to our prospects.

When we do that it’s easier to engage them and pull them through our marketing materials.

Ok, That’s Interesting… So What?

Wow, tough audience…

Ok, well when you focus on deeper benefits, it allows you to tap into core emotions.

When you can tap into core emotions in your marketing, you’re able to pull your readers or views into your message and you stand a better chance of converting them.

Feature and benefits = boring…

Deeper benefits = emotional engagement = conversions.

You can keep digging deeper into the benefits by asking a single, simple question until you get to the benefit that matters most.

That all important question?

So what?

I’ve used this process when creating offers, writing B2B copy, and even just trying to create stronger bullet copy.

And every time I’ve used it with a client, they’ve been blow away by how simple it really is.

So, next time you feel like your copy is missing the point or you’re not digging in deep enough to trigger your prospects emotions…

Be sure to ask — “so what?”

Jon and Chris