The Power of Features and Benefits Among Your Product Descriptions
PIES has a lot of product description types. Like, A LOT! An unassuming one is the Features and Benefits (FAB) description type, and yet it likely offers you one of the best way to help you generate sales of your products -- IF you keep one thing in mind when writing them:
Customers don't really care what your products can do...they care what your products can do for them.
The Features and Benefits description type has powers similar to product attributes but has the additional power of being able to be written with your messaging in mind versus just points of facts.
- They're often bulleted so they catch your customers' attention.
- They're often short and easier to read so your customers consume your messaging quickly.
- They can also convey advantages and benefits and not just features.
Sadly, we've found that this powerful and versatile description type is often omitted or insufficient.
Features Tell and Benefits Sell is one way marketers describe feature and benefit market copy. To help spark your marketing copy writing of FABs, we will demonstrate creation of high-quality feature and benefit description utilizing and aspect of a headlight.
| Product | Features | Advantages | Benefits (Results for customers) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Headlight | No springs or clips | Quick and easy install | Save time, headaches, heartaches, and money from lost or broken items |
Features are facts about your product. In this example, the headlight assembly does not have any springs or clips needed for installation/replacement.
Advantages can be a differentiation from competitors or the advantage of having your defined features. In this example, no clips and springs leads to a quick and easy installation.
Benefits give your customer the What's In It for Me reason. In this example, the result is that the customer doesn't have to worry about losing or breaking small items in already tight spaces like their engine bay while being able to quickly replace their headlight, saving them time and delighting them in the ease of doing so.
Completed example: No springs or clips make installation quick and easy, saving you time and headaches not worrying about delicate parts.
In PIES, the Features and Benefits (FAB) description type can be applied at the individual part number, several part numbers, a group of products/series, or even at your brand level if that is what you're known for and would like to highlight. You can also choose which order to list all your features and benefits via a sequence order number.
Referring to the example:
- You can write the FAB statement for each headlight.
- You can use the FAB statement for all of your headlights.
- You can use the FAB for a special set or series of your headlights, "Series 1000" or "Off-Road Line" for example.
- You can identify the example FAB as "1" in a list of other features.
If you're looking for ideas for your products or need some guidance, contact your SDC support team. If you don't know who your support team members are, contact Joe Sepeda, Product Catalog Manager, at joes@semadatacoop.org.