Features Vs. Benefits: How to Maximize the Impact of Your Messaging
•August 27, 2024
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Why It Matters
Getting messaging wrong can kill product-market fit and growth: leading with concrete capabilities improves clarity, conversion, and word-of-mouth, while overused high-level benefits obscure differentiation and waste marketing.
Summary
On the Forget the Funnel podcast, product marketing leaders argue that the common advice to “sell benefits, not features” is often misapplied. They say B2B companies frequently replace distinctive product capabilities with vague business outcomes on homepages, which erases differentiation and misses the actual early-stage buyer who discovers the product. Instead, they recommend leading with clear product capabilities — what users can do with the product — because that drives faster understanding, viral product interest, and attracts the right customers. Vague outcome claims like “increase revenue” should come later when building a business case for executives, not as homepage headlines.
Original Description
“Sell benefits, not features”.
We’ve all seen the UserOnboard image of Mario + the magic flower = Super Mario. Or Popeye + spinach = super extra-strength Popeye.
It’s the best practice that says you should focus on selling the benefits of your product, rather than the features.
What if we told you that this is a best practice that’s lazy and risky?
Welp. It is. Different customers value different things at different stages of their decision-making. We can’t assume that our customers only care about the benefits or business outcomes of your product.
Don’t get us wrong. Making the outcomes your product provides clear is important. But is it the right thing to be leading with across all of your marketing and messaging and onboarding? I think you’re already picking up what we’re putting down.
So what should you do instead?
Shock. You gotta start with knowing what will resonate with your customers and then translating that into messaging that will convert.
That’s what we dig into on this episode of the Forget The Funnel Podcast. And we’re joined by Anthony Pierri from FletchPMM to help dispel the whole “sell benefits, not features” best practice brilliantly.
He shares the example of the humble homepage; how a lot of brands write its content for the person who they think will approve the deal - some executive - leaning way too heavily into the ‘benefits’ and ‘outcomes’ they think they’ll care about.
Increased revenue. Reduced risk. Saved time.
…which leads to totally undifferentiated “me too” messaging.
This episode is for SaaS founders & practitioners who are looking to:
- Home in on the value themes your customers care about
- Map those themes to relevant product capabilities (whether feature or benefit-based)
- And make sure your messaging is targeted and effective and converts more high-LTV customers.
Discussed:
How exclusively focusing on benefits can lead to generic, “me too” messaging that turns prospects off - if they even pay attention in the first place.
Why understanding what customers value at different decision-making stages leads to higher LTV customers.
And techniques for identifying what resonates most with your customers to develop targeted messaging and marketing.
Key Moments:
01:05 - Anthony Pierri explains how SaaS companies are mixing up features, outcomes and benefits on their product homepage and why that’s a flawed best practice.
08:56 - Claire unpacks Anthony’s “benefits vs features” approach and also asks: what defines a benefit vs an outcome?
13:22 - Claire notes the importance of knowing what your unique features and product attributes are in a saturated market – why and when should you highlight your capabilities as your unique selling points.
18:22 - Georgiana tells us how “pre-research Gia” used to identify the functional and emotional benefits of product features in reverse. From there, she and Claire share their approach for features vs benefits when working with teams.
23:25 - Georgiana brings up how Jobs-to-Be-Done interviews can give you the direction needed to identify the value themes of your product - and more importantly, identify what the features of your product are that deliver the value your customer is looking for.
29:00 - The pair highlight how their process helps product owners better understand the language customers are using, prioritize what customers actually care about, and get a roadmap for messaging.
32:40 - How will you know your approach is working? Georgiana talks us through ways to test and validate your messaging.
Links
Get the free Forget the Funnel workbook to help you implement Customer-Led growth: https://forgetthefunnel.com/workbook
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