Read This, Sell More: Direct Mail Marketing is About Benefits,
Not Features
by Alan Sharpe
Published on this site: September 9th, 2005 - See
more articles from this month
Your customer wants a cleaner kitchen, not a kitchen cleaner.
Your customers are interested in benefits, not features.
So sell benefits in your sales letters.
The difference between a feature and a benefit comes down
to this: A feature is what something does. A benefit is what
something does for you.
Everything you have to say in your direct marketing sales
letters boils down to features and benefits. With every piece
of copy you write, however long or short your copy, you are
always talking in terms of features and benefits.
When I worked on the Bell Mobility account, I discovered
that the marketing folks at Bell have a policy of always presenting
the benefit first, followed by the feature. I had usually
written things the other way around. But they had a good policy.
For example, I would have said, “Digital Data2Go lets
you receive email with your cellphone, saving you the hassle
of finding a phone jack for your laptop whenever you need
to check email while traveling.” Bell insisted that I
present the benefit first, so I instead wrote something like
this: “Never again waste time hunting for a phone jack
when it’s time to check email while traveling. Digital
Data2Go lets you receive email with just your cellphone.”
I think Bell has the right idea, although there are times
when the feature needs to come first.
The tough part in all of this is translating features into
benefits before you start writing. Some benefits are obvious.
Others require some detective work to uncover. I learned that
lesson all over again when I taught copywriting at the University
of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.
I gave my students an exercise that always turned up a surprising
benefit. I told my class that the CN Tower in Toronto, Ontario,
Canada was 1,815 feet and 5 inches tall. Their assignment
was to come up with as many benefits as they could that related
to that feature. Most of them stared at me.
Then they picked up their pens.
Slowly, they started to write.
Each time I ran the exercise, a student or two came up with
a benefit that I had not thought of. Here are a few of the
benefits of having the world’s tallest free-standing
structure in your city:
- attract tourist dollars by charging for tours
- see the whole city from one vantage point
- generate revenue by selling souvenirs
- impress your date with dinner at the revolving restaurant
- host fundraisers (a race up the stairs to the top is
a popular annual fundraiser)
- generate revenue from organizations that monitor the
weather
- navigate around the city easily because the tower is
a landmark visible from almost everywhere
- generate revenue from TV and radio companies by hosting
their antennas on the communications deck
- improve the flow of traffic along the nearby Gardner
Expressway by locating traffic cameras on the tower
- generate publicity by hanging a banner down the side of
the structure
There were many more benefits, some worthy and some just
wacky, but all of them were benefits of one kind or another.
Together, they demonstrated that products and services, including
yours, probably have more benefits than are apparent at first glance.
So hunt for those benefits that are relevant to your potential
buyers and current customers. And remember this, every time
you craft a sales letter: your client wants a 5/8 inch hole,
not a 5/8 inch drill bit.
Alan Sharpe is a business-to-business direct mail
copywriter who helps businesses attract new clients using
direct mail marketing. Sign up for free weekly tips like this
at http://www.sharpecopy.com
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