One of the most common mistakes in copywriting is to project the features of your product and service rather than the benefits. Again and again I go to sales pages and find that my question “what’s in it for me?” remains unanswered. If you cannot answer this question your sales page is useless. Features will not answer the million-dollar question but benefits will.
Features: These are just telling the potential customer about your product but will not really tell them how it can help solve their problems. You see this many times with company websites. For example “our vacuum is sleek and state of the art.” Well that is all very fine but how does this help your reader?
Your potential customer has one burning question “so what’s in it for me?” In other words how will your product and service help solve their problems? This is what your sales letter needs to answer in order to be effective. The way to do this is to list benefits. All the things your product or service can do for your reader. For example, “our vacuums have twin brushes that will help you really deep clean your carpet.” Now your reader can really see how your vacuum can help them.
From these examples you can easily see the difference between features and benefits. However it is quite surprising how many business websites make this common mistake. Unknown to them it is costing them a great deal of money in lost sales.
One way to differentiate features from benefits is to write down 2 lists one that is listing your product’s features and the second will be all the different ways your product will help your potential customer, it does not matter how strange they may be, you can always sort them out later. These will be the benefits of your product and will answer your reader’s question, “what’s in it for me?”
So when you are considering your sales page remember not to make this mistake and you will be able to get the maximum efficiency from your sales page and make more sales. More sales means more profit for you and your company.