Put Drama, Power And Passion Into Your Benefits

What’s the difference between Benefits and Features?
A lot of people struggle with this one. You will hear time and time again from copywriters that your copy must be full of benefits. Your problem is how you determine the difference. Ok let’s look at some everyday examples. If you have a hairdressing salon it might look something like this.

Feature: -

1. We have 10 of the best trained stylists.
    
2. The most up to date salon including fully adjustable seats.
    
3. We stock only the best brands of hair products.
    
4. We have 3 of our own fully trained nail technicians.

Benefit: -

1. Fully trained redesign specialists means we will give you at least 5 brand new drop dead gorgeous hair designs to choose from.

2. Which means, no more uncomfortable hair washes leaving you with a sore neck.

3. Which means, our products will condition your hair to leave it silky smooth and manageable.

4. Which means you can complete your new look by having your nails beautifully manicured.

It’s a good idea before you start writing to make a list of the features of your product. To do this properly you have to really know your product. Beside each one write “which means” then write a benefit for your reader. If you can’t think of a benefit chances are it’s not an important feature.

Some writers take this a step further. The highly acclaimed Ted Nicholas for example writes as many benefits as he can think of on 3×5 cards. He uses short action words which are appealing to the reader always keeping in mind WIIFM.

The only reasons your reader will be interested in your product are the benefits they will gain from it, remember people are only interested in themselves. Quite often when you are going through this process of listing the benefits you discover your headline.

You then need to decide the order of the benefits, ie placing the strongest benefit first then the second and so on. These can be used in bullet form or weaved into your copy or sometimes even a combination of the two.

So remember, you have to think Benefits, Benefits and then more Benefits, you can never have too many!

Anne Pearson
Compelling Copywriter

http://www.mapcopywriting.com
anne@mapcopywriting.com
Skype – mapcopywriting
Tel / Fax – 01772 468979

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