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Read This, Sell More: Direct Mail Marketing Is About Benefits,
Not Features
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By Alan Sharpe
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Your customer wants a cleaner kitchen, not a kitchen cleaner.
Your customers are interested in benefits, not features. So sellbenefits in your sales letters.
The difference between a feature and a benefit comes down tothis: A feature is what something does. A benefit is whatsomething does for you.
Everything you have to say in your direct marketing salesletters boils down to features and benefits. With every piece ofcopy you write, however long or short your copy, you are alwaystalking in terms of features and benefits.
When I worked on the Bell Mobility account, I discovered thatthe marketing folks at Bell have a policy of always presentingthe benefit first, followed by the feature. I had usuallywritten things the other way around. But they had a good policy.
For example, I would have said, ¡°Digital Data2Go lets youreceive email with your cellphone, saving you the hassle offinding a phone jack for your laptop whenever you need to checkemail while travelling.¡± Bell insisted that I present thebenefit first, so I instead wrote something like this: ¡°Neveragain waste time hunting for a phone jack when it¡¯s time tocheck email while travelling. Digital Data2Go lets you receiveemail with just your cellphone.¡±
I think Bell has the right idea, although there are times whenthe feature needs to come first.
The tough part in all of this is translating features intobenefits before you start writing. Some benefits are obvious.Others require some detective work to uncover. I learned thatlesson all over again when I taught copywriting at theUniversity of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.
I gave my students an exercise that always turned up asurprising benefit. I told my class that the CN Tower inToronto, Ontario, Canada was 1,815 feet and 5 inches tall. Theirassignment was to come up with as many benefits as they couldthat 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 abenefit that I had not thought of. Here are a few of thebenefits of having the world¡¯s tallest free-standing structurein your city:
* attract tourist dollars by charging for tours * see the wholecity from one vantage point * generate revenue by sellingsouvenirs * impress your date with dinner at the revolvingrestaurant * host fundraisers (a race up the stairs to the topis a popular annual fundraiser) * generate revenue fromorganizations that monitor the weather * navigate around thecity easily because the tower is a landmark visible from almosteverywhere * generate revenue from TV and radio companies byhosting their antennas on the communications deck * improve theflow of traffic along the nearby Gardner Expressway by locatingtraffic cameras on the tower * generate publicity by hanging abanner 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 potentialbuyers and current customers. And remember this, every time youcraft a sales letter: your client wants a 5/8 inch hole, not a5/8 inch drill bit.
??2005 Sharpe Copy Inc. You may reprint this article online andin print provided the links remain live and the content remainsunaltered (including the "About the author" message).
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