How to create an amazing product/service benefit statement?
Feature - Need - Benefit
The feature need benefit model is a highly effective way of defining a powerful benefit for your product/service.
I highly recommend you have a sit down with your team to brainstorm each feature and benefit if you already haven't.
Let's start with each feature, why is it needed in the first place and the emotional/tangible benefits it bring to the customer.
For example if I am a online retail website selling groceries and I am looking at a web hosting provider:
Start with all your Features for each product/service
Your product may have many features you wouldn't even think about. For example if we are talking about a web hosting plan product, a feature could be the following:
- 15 GB Disk Space
- 99.9% Uptime guarantee
- Automatic Backup
- Control Panel Access
- 24/7 Live Chat Support
Each feature could be important for each unique customer.
For example a customer that has a previous bad experience with losing all their important data will appreciate the Automatic Backup Feature.
Or a person who is more hands-on and technically savvy would want to get into his own server and edit things with the Control panel access
But the thing is, if you don't list it down at all, it doesn't exist in the minds of the customer when they evaluate your product/service.
So it doesn't matter if your product is the same as your competition. The first competitor who actually lists it down could be the best candidate for his evaluation.
Once you have listed down all the features that you can think of for your product.
Next let's derive the benefits
Sometimes the benefits of our features can seem like common sense, but that is far from the truth. Professionals often have the difficulty of unlearning what they already know to sit in the shoes of a new customer.
We will always need to make sure our customers know the exact reason for creating each feature.
Treat your customers like it's the first time they are hearing of your product/service, chances are it's true.
Step 1. breaking down big features into smaller features
An example, 99.9% Uptime guarantee can be broken down into 99.9% + Uptime + Guarantee
Why 99.9%? Why Uptime? What is the Guarantee?
How about another example, 24/7 Live chat support, we will use this in the following steps.
The feature, 24/7 Live chat support can be broken down into 24/7 + Live Chat + Support
Step 2. Define the problem/opportunity that led you to include this feature
24/7 - Business can occur at anytime of the day, our e-commerce customer has a website down at midnight which resulted in loss sales overnight.
Livechat - If we use emails, customers do not get their solutions fast enough and they are frustrated
Support - Our customers are not savvy enough to troubleshoot the problem by themselves
Step 3. What are the tangible benefits of solving this problem or taking this opportunity?
24/7 - Prevent full loss of sales over server outage
Livechat - In the even of server outage, quickly address the problem to prevent further loss of sales
Support - Don't need to pay for an expert to fix this problem
Step 4. Putting it together
Business happens 24/7 and a website outage during the night can cause full loss of sales overnight.
During times like this, you need to swiftly solve the problem to prevent further loss of sales.
What's worse, these problems are usually too technical for you to solve it yourself immediately.
That is why we have a 24/7 Live chat support.
Our 24/7 live chat support helps you to:
- Prevent full loss of sales over server outage
- In the even of server outage, quickly address the problem to prevent further loss of sales
- Don't need to pay for an expert to fix this problem
As an industry professional, I promise you that this sounds as good as anything a decent copywriter can produce.
Bonus Step 5. Add 2nd Order benefits
Most of the benefits that you will list down actually have 2nd order benefits.
This simply means there is an additional benefit to the benefit you have already listed.
Sometimes this benefits are not very obvious so our customers need our help to link them up together.
For example, Prevent full loss of sales over server outage so that ______________________.
Remember what I said about customers responding to unique features/benefits?
The blank can mean different things to different customers.
Leaving your 2nd order benefit empty allows the customer to fill in the blanks.
However, putting it in can make your benefit statement very powerful, but it comes at a cost.
You risk of alienating other groups of customers who do not fall into the same category if your benefit is too specific
Here's an example
For example, if I am an e-commerce owner that runs advertisements 24/7.
An enhanced benefit statement would be "Prevent full loss of sales over server outage so your advertisement spend doesn't go to waste overnight."
Losing sales is one issue, but now I feel the extra pain of burning extra money to pay people to come to my storefront when the door is locked.
However, if I am not advertising 24/7, this enhance benefit statement makes the first sentence much less powerful because the customer does not have the mindspace to feel in the blanks.
Remember, this is totally optional, use it wisely.