Features vs Benefits: The Ultimate Guide for attracting clients to your business, convincing them you’re the best, and making that money.

It was January 3rd. The “holidaze” of over-eating and over-drinking was finally over.

I woke up still feeling full from last night’s feast: pizza and pasta. As I dragged my lethargic body out of bed to get dressed, I found that buttoning my jeans was like putting a rubber band around a pillow: I felt bloated and gross. Even my skin felt oily. 

Looking in the mirror I could see my old friends coming back for a holiday visit: my growing love-handles, my softening thighs, and my jiggly belly. Every woman has their zones, mine is definitely the mid-section.

Long-story short, I was always a “little heavy” grow up. I honestly just thought it was my genetics: everyone around me had a little extra to love!  

But when I was in my mid-20s, a light-bulb went off and I realised that maybe my extra-pounds had something to do with all that fried chicken. (I’m very smart.)

I decided I had to lose some weight. After working out like a maniac and being extremely strict with my diet, I did lose weight; about 25 pounds.

But that strict discipline is so hard to maintain, especially when chicken-wings exist. So every year a few pounds creeped back on.  And then a few more. And a few more. 

My breaking point came when I spent this Christmas season at my parent’s house in good-ol’-deep-fried—Texas. It was a bacchanal of barbecue, nachos, and margaritas. I had fallen back into the Texas-trap, quickly gaining back pounds I had worked so hard to shed.

What to do?

As luck would have it a favourite cousin of mine also loved margaritas & nachos, but had found a way to control her weight.

At dinner one night I asked her, “Nikki, how to do you live in Texas, eat these delicious nachos, and look so f***ing great? I’m dying here!”

She responded that she’d signed up for the new “my Weight Watchers” app and lost over 10 pounds. What’s more, she’d kept it off relatively easily all year. 

Now, this isn’t an article about my weight-loss journey or even a promo for Weight-Watchers (although the app is pretty great, and I’m happy to talk about nachos whenever you like.)

It’s about Features vs Benefits: why they’re important to your marketing & how to use them to increase sales.

I’m going to use examples from Weight-Watchers (“WW”) brand to illustrate the importance of “Features vs. Benefits” when selling a product or service.

Their marketing is lit & I think weight-loss is a relatable example for most women. 

So like me with a bucket of fried-chicken, let’s dive in!

The original Weight Watchers program began in the 1960s when founder Jean Nidetch invited a group of women to her home to teach them how she lost weight and maintained this banging figure. (see photo)  

The idea evolved into a full-fledged business within a few years; Weight-Watchers became a bonafide weight-loss program based around it’s central pillar: a food-point system. 

The “WW” food-point system means you’re allotted a certain amount “points” you can spend per day. These points are like tickets at a carnival: they give you access to the fun! Because generally the more “points” a food has the worse it is for you. Think: a donut = 8 points, lean-chicken breast = 0 points.

For example, let’s say you’re allowed 25 food-points per day. And let’s estimate that slice of pizza is ~7 points, broccoli is 0, and a tablespoon of olive oil is 1. That means that if you black-out on a large deep-dish pepperoni & pineapple at lunch, your ass is going to be eating celery sticks for dinner.

Generally the program rewards eating lean proteins, veggies, and fruits. But, the idea is that you can still eat some junk food you love.

In recent years, Weight-Watchers has revamped their marketing to become just “WW”. The idea is the same: a food point-system. But, the new “WW” incorporates cool features like a point-counting app, personalised nutrition tests, a focus on wellness & meditation, and a community support group.

But the main point I want to focus on here is how does “WW” do bomb-ass marketing by highlighting their Benefits instead of Features.

Briefly, what’s a feature & what’s a benefit?

Really quickly, before we see some illustrative examples with “WW”, let me define “feature” and “benefit” in terms of marketing. Then we’ll get into the details with tons of examples that you can use in your own marketing.

A feature is: a distinctive characteristic or attribute of a product or service. Think: “The Porsche has a 500- horsepower engine”.

Features describe a product or service: what it does, what it has, or what it’s made of. Often features are technical aspects or inherent characteristics. For instance, in our Porsche example, features would be all of the technical stuff about the car: the size of the engine, the horsepower, the power steering, how many miles per gallon it gets, the suspension, etc.

A benefit is: an advantage or profit gained from a product or service. Think: “The Porsche is so fast you’ll leave your competition at the stoplight.”

Benefits are like features in that they highlight a specific quality of the product or service. However benefits are personalised to show how that quality helps the client. For example, following our Porsche example, the car’s benefits might include: how the car “satiates your need for speed”, gives you “the pleasure and ease of driving the best quality car in the world”, or how the cool car “distracts from your horrible personality and small endowment”… 

Opps! 😉

Benefits take the same basic concept as a feature but transform it to sound appealing to the potential client.

• “Precision suspension” becomes —>  “the pleasure and ease of driving”.

• “30 miles per gallon” becomes —> “never worry about running out of gas”

“Power windows” becomes —> “no one will know it’s a toupee” 😉

¡Ojo! Benefits are always defined according to the client’s pains, fears, and dreams. For instance, to our mid-life crisis Porsche buyer “precision suspension” might become “the pleasure and ease of driving”. Whereas “precision suspension” to a worried mom would become “safety on the road in any weather.”  

Learning your client’s pains, fears, and dreams is extremely important when crafting your marketing message. But, that’s a big article for another day!

Now that we get the basic idea, let’s dive into how “WW” got all my money by using Benefits instead of Features.

How “WW” used Benefits to get all my money

Let’s start from the top with this dominant image from the “WW” website. What are the first impressions we get from this image?

• “Everything is on the menu”
• “Eat what you love and lose weight”
• “Eat me,” said the giant-ass hamburger and French fries 

What’s going on here?

• Are they explaining exactly how they created the “WW” program based years of scientific research?  No.
• Are they showing you how their food-point system analyses calories, proteins, and sugars in a complex formula?  Nope.
• Are they telling you about their world-class nutritionists who studied at Harvard/Yale/the Moon? Hell no!

They are showing you a giant-ass hamburger and telling you:

“You can eat your hamburger and lose weight too.”

Boom.

What’s every human’s biggest fear when it comes to weight-loss?

Answer: eating bland, boring “rabbit food” forever.

Look, everyone knows how to lose weight.  If I just ate skinless-chicken breast and broccoli 21 times a week, I’d have an ass like a bowling ball and I wouldn’t need to sign up for “WW”.

We all basically “know” how to eat healthy. 

The problem is that the weight-loss solution we know doesn’t fit with our needs or our desires. Eating “healthy” draws to mind images of sad salads and tasteless turkey. Eating “healthy” usually means denying our desire for pizza, pasta, hamburgers, and all of God’s other precious gifts.

Therefore, “WW”s biggest genius is understanding our fundamental human need for carbs, cheese, and bacon and turning it into a weight-loss plan. But “WW” knocks it out of the park by focusing on the BENEFITS, not the features, of this plan.

Their messaging is rarely around the science behind the system, but rather around the food you can eat on the “WW” plan. For example, take a look at this copy:

“We’ve got 9,000+ recipes for delicious, satisfying meals. Here’s a typical day of eating on myWW”

Followed by a photo of crispy onion rings:

“WW” always focuses on how their weight-loss-plan BENEFITS the client. On how clients can to chow down on those crispy-little-deep-fried-deliciousness, and still get a J-Lo body.

To put it plainly, they’re more focused on the syrup than the science.

But, the craziest part is that even when “WW” does explain the “science-y” stuff, they STILL focus on the benefits that science offers its clients. Take a look:

In this example, “WW” are theoretically talking about the ‘science-backed SmartPoints system.’  But if you really examine “WW’s” language, they aren’t explaining much science: 

Breaking it down, “WW” only briefly mentions two “science-y” Features:

• a science-backed SmartPoints system

• something about a Zeropoint food list

But look at all the Benefits it talks about:

… “takes the guesswork out of what to eat, cook, or order.” 

…”no food is off-limits.”

…”extra flexibility”

…”don’t have to track or measure”

…”total freedom in what you eat”

…”help you reach your goals”

Once again, “WW” nails their Benefits by solving people’s biggest pains around dieting. Their plan provides the solution to painful dieting problems like: not knowing what to cook, foods being restricted, no flexibility or freedom, tracking everything, and not reaching their weight-loss goals.

“WW” succeeds in their marketing because their plan’s benefits are the perfect anti-dote to all of our fears and pains about dieting.

Pop Quiz!  Can you find the Benefits?

Let’s sharpen our benefit spotting skills with a pop quiz! Can you find the benefits in these “WW” marketing examples?

First, here’s another “WW” description about food, because why not?

That one was too easy! Did you get them all?

Let’s count the Benefits “WW” uses in it’s marketing:

✅ Eating carbs

✅ Eating chocolate

✅ “feel full” (such a good one!)

✅ “banish hunger”

✅ “easy-to-follow recipes”

✅ “don’t even have to track”

✅ “eat what you love and lose weight” (I’m going to get this tattooed on my body I love it so much)

Final test, see if you can spot the benefits in this copy about the “WW” digital app:

How’d we do?

For me the benefits of the “Digital App” are:

✅ “follow… anywhere, anytime”

✅ “access curated content” (the benefit here is curated. Curated means they’ve done the work for you and therefore it’s easy for the client)

✅ “Stay inspired and celebrate”

✅   “earning free/exclusive rewards”

✅    “track meals in seconds” (the benefit here is in the quickness)

✅   “recipes at your fingertips”

✅  “automatic fitness syncing”

Now….how can YOU to use benefits to create your own kick-ass Marketing Message?

We’ve learned about features vs. benefits, seen tons of examples, and probably all gotten a bit hungry along the way. Now, it’s time to apply these lessons to create your own kick ass marketing plan.

But, where do we begin? How can YOU brainstorm seductive Benefits to promote your own product or service?

Well, you can download my amazing Free-Guide:

“FEATURES VS. BENEFITS:

A step-by-step guide to: Clarify your communication, Amp up your marketing, & Sell, baby, sell”

In this Free Guide, I’ll take you through my easy step-by-step process to craft your perfect Marketing Message in 3 simple steps. We’ll use BENEFITS to define your offer, speak your customers language, and then sell baby sell!

In this content-packed 20-page guide, we’ll break down your features, transform them into benefits, and finally craft your perfect Marketing pitch that you can copy/paste everywhere you want to sell. Your business’ copy writing, done.

Finally: The “One Question”

Finally, if you get stuck trying to decide if something is a feature or a benefit, ask yourself this simple question: 

“Am I describing the product/service? Or am I describing the ideal life of my client?”

✅ A benefit will always touch on the ideal life of your client. Or it will explain how your product/service removes a “pain” which gets your client closer to their ideal life.
❌  A feature will only describe the product/service itself.

Finally, listen to Oprah & think like a queen:

For their new marketing campaign, the very smart people at “WW” got Oprah to be their spokesperson.  Long story short, Oprah has always struggled with her weight-loss journey and has been very public with her fans about it. Plus, she’s freaking Oprah!!! 

To finish up this article & inspire you to go forth and create awesome benefits that attract your ideal client, let’s take an advice from the queen herself:

“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another steppingstone to greatness.”  Oprah-freaking-Winfrey

When you are trying to brainstorm benefits to appeal to your ideal client, have fun with it!  It’s normal if you don’t know exactly how to turn your Features into Benefits at first.  But think that the more you get to know your client, the easier it will become.

Download my amazing Guide “FEATURES VS. BENEFITS: A step-by-step guide to: Clarify your communication, Amp up your marketing, & Sell, baby, sell”

I hope you enjoyed this article! Leave comments about what you’d like to learn about next & download the guide!

Love,

Vero