Why are benefits important?
As described by Kayla Carmichael:
Features are what the product or service does, describing which attributes set it apart from the competition. Benefits describe why those features matter and how they help the target audience. For marketing messages, it’s typically better to go with a benefits-heavy approach, because benefits are what compel consumers to purchase.
From https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/features-vs-benefits-messaging-ht
You can incorporate benefits into any content that you create, including case studies for Inland Empire businesses.
Features are not benefits. For more information, see the Bredemarket page on features.
In addition to benefits and features, you may (or may not) want to get fancy and talk about advantages. For more information, see the Bredemarket page on advantages.
Additional information on benefits
Here is a sampling of what John E. Bredehoft of Bredemarket has written on the topic of benefits.
(5/3/2024) Content Marketing and Proposals are Pretty Much the Same
I’m going to list four aspects of a particular document, and you tell me whether I’m talking about a piece of marketing content, or a proposal.
- The document focuses on the customer’s needs.
- The document describes benefits the customer will realize.
- The document targets one or more sets of people hungry for the solution.
- The document shall be in Aptos 12 point, single spaced, with 1 inch margins, and shall not exceed 20 pages.
Guess what? From that description you CAN’T tell if it’s a piece of content or a proposal.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2024/05/03/content-marketing-and-proposals-are-pretty-much-the-same/
(4/26/2024) Authenticator Assurance Levels (AALs) and Digital Identity
Do the different authenticator assurance levels provide any true benefits, or are they just items in a government agency’s technical check-off list?
Perhaps the better question to ask is this: what happens if the WRONG person obtains access to the data?
- Could the fraudster cause financial loss to a government agency?
- Threaten personal safety?
- Commit civil or criminal violations?
- Or, most frightening to agency heads who could be fired at any time, could the fraudster damage an agency’s reputation?
If some or all of these are true, then a high authenticator assurance level is VERY beneficial.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2024/04/26/authenticator-assurance-levels-aals-and-digital-identity/
(4/9/2024) Video: Differentiating Your Company and Your Products/Services
This video obviously discusses differentiation, but also discusses customer focus as well as the seven questions your content creator should ask you before writing (including benefits and target audience). Not only are the seven questions good for creating content, but they are also good for differentiating content. (For example, why is your product/service so great while all of your competitors’ products/services suck?)
More at https://bredemarket.com/2024/04/09/video-differentiating-your-company-and-your-products-services/
(3/15/2024) What is B2B Writing?
When I write something for a business:
- I must acknowledge the business’ needs and explain the benefits of my solution to meet the business needs. A feature list without any benefits is just a list of cool things; you still have to explain how the cool things will benefit the business by solving its problem.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2024/03/15/what-is-b2b-writing/
(12/11/2023) When You MUST Focus on Features
Bredemarket has consistently preached benefits, benefits, benefits, since customers want to know what’s in it for them. Customers don’t care if Bredemarket has been in business for three years; they care about how Bredemarket will facilitate consideration of their offerings.
But Tamara Grominsky, in her article “High-Converting Homepages,” points out one significant exception to the “benefits over features” rule—or, in alternate terms, the “outcomes over capabilities” rule.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/12/11/when-you-must-focus-on-features/
(10/8/2023) Your Prospects Don’t Care About Your Technology
Adopt a customer focus and talk about things that your prospects care about, such as how your product will solve their problems.
- Do your customers require better ease of use, speed, accuracy, or other benefits? Do the features of your technology provide those benefits?
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/10/08/your-prospects-dont-care-about-your-technology/
(8/17/2023) There’s a Reason Why “Tech” is a Four-Letter Word
What are the benefits of the technology? When I previously said that you should explain what the technology is, most prospects aren’t looking for detailed schematics. They primarily care about what the technology will do for them. For example, that hammer can keep their wooden structure from falling down. They don’t care about the exact composition of the metal in the hammer head.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/17/theres-a-reason-why-tech-is-a-four-letter-word/
(8/11/2023) Blog About Your Identity Firm’s Benefits Now. Why Wait?
If your post simply states that your new latent fingerprint station captures print evidence at 2000 pixels per inch, most of your prospects are going to say, “So what?”
On the other hand, if your post talks about how your latent fingerprint station’s high capture resolution benefits your prospects by helping experts to solve crimes more quickly and getting bad people off the street, then your prospects are going to care about your product/service—and will convert from prospects to paying customers.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/08/11/blog-about-your-identity-firms-benefits-now-why-wait/
(7/29/2023) Financial Identity: Which Firms Can Remotely Onboard Financial Customers?
- Someone who consistently tosses around acronyms like ABM, FRVT, KYB, KYC, and PAD, but who would never dump undefined acronyms on your readers? (If you’re not a financial/identity professional and don’t know these acronyms, they stand for anti-money laundering, Face Recognition Vendor Test, Know Your Business, Know Your Customer, and Presentation Attack Detection.)
- Someone who will explain why your customers should care about these acronyms, and the benefits a compliant solution provides to them?
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/07/29/financial-identity-liminal/
(7/28/2023) Iris Recognition, Apple, and Worldcoin
Or in non-scientific speak, one benefit of iris recognition is that you know it is accurate, even when submitting a pair of irises in a one-to-many search against a huge database. How huge? We’ll discuss later.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/07/28/iris-apple-worldcoin/
(7/26/2023) Is the Funnel Consideration Phase Quantitative or Qualitative?
Here’s a example from my law enforcement automated fingerprint identificaiton system (AFIS) days.
- If your prospect is a police chief who is sick and tired of burglars ransacking homes and causing problems for the police department, don’t tell your prospect about your AFIS image detail or independent accuracy testing results. After all, 1000 ppi and 99.967 accuracy are only numbers.
- Provide the police chief with customer-focused benefit statements about how quickly your AFIS will clean up the burglary problem in the town, giving residents peace of mind and the police department less stress.
If you can appeal to those emotions, that police chief will consider you more highly and move on to conversion (purchase).
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/07/26/is-the-funnel-consideration-phase-quantitative-or-qualitative/
(7/16/2023) Which Words Should Your Marketers Use? My Four Suggestions.
The prospect doesn’t care about wireless headphones per se. The prospect cares about the troubles they face with tangled cords, and how your company offers a solution to their problem of tangled cords.
Features are important to you. Benefits are important to your prospects. Since the prospects are the ones with the money, listen to them and talk about benefits that change their lives, not how great your features are.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/07/16/which-words/
(7/12/2023) We Don’t Need Customer Focus Because Our Product Is So Great
Sure, talk about your product, but start with the customer first and their needs. Then say how your product benefits the customer, exceeds their needs, and delights them.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/07/12/we-dont-need-customer-focus-because-our-product-is-so-great/
(6/30/2023) Applying the “Six Questions” to LinkedIn Self-promotion
| Benefits? | (1) No identity learning curve (2) No content learning curve (3) Proven results |
Now that you know how your post will end, you can work on the rest of the post. Persuade your reader to follow your call to action. Explain how you will benefit them.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/06/30/applying-the-six-questions-to-linkedin-self-promotion/
(4/16/2023) Four Mini-Case Studies for One Inland Empire Business—My Own
If I could demonstrate that Bredemarket benefited a firm via a case study, that could help Bredemarket get business from other firms. I said so myself…
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/04/16/four-mini-case-studies-for-one-inland-empire-business-my-own/
(4/15/2023) Six Benefits for Inland Empire Businesses from Case Studies
With credibility comes trust. When potential customers read your case studies and find out what you’ve done for others, they’re more inclined to trust that you can provide similar benefits to them.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/04/15/six-benefits-for-inland-empire-businesses-from-case-studies/
(3/25/2023) Technology firms and qualitative benefits
If you are a technology business who is communicating the benefits of your products or services, don’t assume that these benefits have to be quantified. Qualitative benefits can work just as well.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/03/25/technology-firms-and-qualitative-benefits/
(3/4/2023) Lockheed Martin’s Anti-biofouling Customer Focus
And Lockheed Martin has already identified the benefits of the completed project. Not the benefits to Lockheed Martin, but the benefits to its customer, the U.S. Navy.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2023/03/04/lockheed-martins-anti-biofouling-customer-focus/
(12/4/2022) Does Every Blog Post Need a Call to Action?
So let’s say you’re an Inland Empire business that needs a content creator to write a blog post for you.
And let’s say that you have specific goals for this blog post.
And you’re targeting a particular audience for this blog post. (Maybe candy lovers.)
And you realize that buyers aren’t persuaded by a list of features you offer, but by a list of benefits for them. (Yes, benefits are important.)
More at https://bredemarket.com/2022/12/04/does-every-blog-post-need-a-call-to-action/
(10/30/2022) Six questions your content creator should ask you
I’ve written ad nauseum on the difference between benefits and features, so for this question five about benefits I’ll just briefly say that written content works best when it communicates how the solution will help (benefit) the customer. A list of features will not make a difference to a customer who has specific needs. Do you meet those needs? Maintain a customer focus.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2022/10/30/six-questions-your-content-creator-should-ask-you/
(8/25/2022) Why Visionaries Keep Their Mouths Shut
But before you write a single word of that content, you need to ask yourself some questions (even for a short piece of content):
- Why does your offering change your customers’ lives?
- How will it change their lives?
- What is the offering?
- What is the goal of the piece of content?
- What are the benefits (not the features, the benefits) of your offering?
- Who is the target audience for this content?
More at https://bredemarket.com/2022/08/25/why-visionaries-keep-their-mouths-shut/
(5/5/2022) I’m still the biometric content marketing and proposal writing expert…but who benefits?
So now all of this SEO traction will not benefit you, the potential Bredemarket finger/face client, but it obviously will benefit my new employer. I can see it now when people talk about my new employer: “Isn’t that the company where the biometric content marketing expert is the Senior Product Marketing Manager?”
(5/4/2022) Is Calendly customer focused?
You probably noted that these were stated as benefits rather than features. If Calendly were to say, “We offer Scheduling Gizmo 2800,” Conductor could reply, “So what?” But when Calendly said that its solution delivers organic traffic and higher return on investment, Conductor paid attention.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2022/05/04/is-calendly-customer-focused/
(4/16/2022) Four truths and a fable about the Ontario-San Antonio Heights “Mule Car”
Since this is the Bredemarket blog, I can’t let this story pass without discussing the benefits of this system:
- Faster travel to on the southbound route to Ontario due to the faster downhill time.
- No use of power for the southbound route.
- Greater energy on the northbound route due to the rest that the mules received on the southbound journey.
(4/15/2022) Two Benefits of Virtual Power Plants (VPPs)
SDG&E realizes that you can’t just talk about the features of virtual power plants. SDG&E’s customers don’t care about features. Its customers only care about what’s in it for them. So SDG&E collected some benefits of virtual power plants.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2022/04/15/two-benefits-of-virtual-power-plants-vpps/
(7/29/2021) How the APMP Body of Knowledge (BOK) benefits Bredemarket’s NON-proposal clients
…the BOK and the APMP itself talk about topics that have applicability far beyond the creation of a proposal….all seven of those categories just as easily apply to the creation of a blog post, case study, white paper, corporate strategy, or ANY deliverable for a customer-facing firm.
(6/18/2021) Case study example (that I didn’t write)
You’ll also note the use of “detriment statements,” or the reverse of benefit statements. Lack of consistency itself is NOT a detriment. More work for employees IS a detriment.
More at https://bredemarket.com/2021/06/18/case-study-example-that-i-didnt-write/
(5/12/2021) Communicating benefits (not features) to identity customers (Part 3 of 3)
The two hour rapid DNA processing time offers different benefits for these different use cases.
- As I previously stated in my first example of a “so what?” test, the ability to run rapid DNA at booking keeps dangerous criminals from being released by identifying those who are wanted for serious crimes.
- A two hour processing time for crime scene evidence solves crimes more quickly, and again potentially puts dangerous criminals in jail more quickly.
- A two hour response for disaster victim identification brings peace of mind to family members whose relatives may have perished in a disaster.
(5/11/2021) Communicating benefits (not features) to identity customers (Part 2 of 3)
So you’re going to come up with separate benefit statements for examiners, separate ones for livescan operators, and separate benefit statements for each of the stakeholders. And each of these benefits will be enumerated in the section of the proposal that the individual stakeholder will read. (News flash: hardly anyone reads the entire proposal; they only read the section that pertains to them.)
(5/10/2021) Communicating benefits (not features) to identity customers (Part 1 of 3)
So if you encounter a statement that isn’t a benefit, you have to act like an irritating two-year old and ask “so what?” until you actually get a benefit statement.
(9/4/2020) When LinkedIn Articles Make Sense
This month’s local speaker, Marcia Riner of Trajectory Consulting, led a session on ways in which freelancers can diversify their income….And one of Marcia Riner’s tips was…use LinkedIn articles to connect to businesspeople.
Riner is certainly not the first person to promote the benefits of LinkedIn articles. LinkedIn has obviously done this, and Agorapulse has recently published a good piece about the advantages of LinkedIn article publication.
More at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-linkedin-articles-make-sense-john-e-bredehoft/
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