Defining Product-Service Features and Benefits

What’s the Difference between a Feature and a Benefit?

Features are qualities or characteristics of your product or service.

Benefits are the favorable results that your customers obtain by using your product or service.

Features

It is important to be able to fully describe the features of your product or services so your customers understand precisely what you are offering. For each product/service you sell, you need to describe every feature. Features of a toothbrush, for example, might include soft bristles, flexible head, etc. Features of a marketing consulting practice might include developing corporate identities, creating newspaper advertisements, developing a structured networking approach, etc.

When developing your marketing approach, a list of features of your product/service would be best used in a brochure or other marketing materials where you have space to be descriptive. Your overall marketing strategy, however, is based on the benefits if using your product or service. The best marketing approaches are based on the single most important benefit statement.

Benefits

Benefits are based on the result of having used the product. For each feature of your product or service, ask yourself, “What does the customer really GET from using this feature”? The benefit of soft bristles on a toothbrush to the customer that is having gum problems, for example, is less friction on tender gums. The benefit of a flexible head is the ability to brush hard-to-reach areas in the mouth, removing plaque that causes bacteria. So the marketing approach for the soft-bristled, flexible head toothbrush would be based around the idea of preventing periodontal disease.

The single most important benefit of all the features of a marketing approach is to increase sales. Creating marketing tools is a feature of a marketing consultant’s services, but increasing sales is the benefit obtained.

Creating Benefit Statements

Benefit statements usually fit in the categories of convenience, saving time or money, more experience, a particular skill, etc. Marketing approaches are built on benefit statements, not features, commonly referred to as selling the “sizzle”, not the steak.

Automobile sales are a perfect example. How many automobile ads have you seen that actually list the features of the car? Automobile manufacturers understand that customers do not make buying decisions because of power steering or other features; most customers purchase automobiles based on the customer’s perceived benefits from owning that particular vehicle. So, luxury models and sports cars are marketed on lifestyle perceptions, how you’ll look and feel in the car, how others will perceive you when they see you in the car, etc. BMW, “the ultimate driving machine” speaks to potential customers not about leather seats or power steering (features), but makes the emotional appeal to one’s sense of self, how the customer will feel owning the ultimate driving machine.

Benefit Statement to Marketing Strategy

So, after you’ve listed all the features of your product/service, and then identified the benefit obtained from each feature, ask yourself if there is one single powerful benefit obtained from using your product/service. Will using your product/service save your customers money? Will it save them time? Will it prevent an illness? Will it make the customers feel better, stronger, healthier, sexier?

Identify that one focused benefit, and then develop your marketing strategy based on it.