Aull Or Nothing

As a writer and consultant, I often remind clients they need to focus on the benefits of their product or service, not simply list the features.

Of course, as all of you, my intelligent and well-educated readers, already know, you really need to mention both. The features tell their prospects what their product does, while benefits explain why those features matter — how they’ll make the customer’s life better, easier, richer, more fun, whatever. The touchy-feely benefits let the customer know what the product will do for them, and the features support those feel-good benefit statements with objective numbers and hard facts.

What I find people don’t always “get” though, is the need to focus on the right benefits. And how to figure out what those “right” benefits are. Sometimes, what matters to your customers can change, often faster than you might think.

A Case in Point

I’m working at the moment with a company that sells business equipment and software. While their products aren’t prohibitively expensive (most are under $1,000), they can still represent a fairly large budget outlay for their target small business market. For years, their sales have been robust and growing. But recently, sales have fallen off.

Now, some of this can be explained by the current economic conditions in general. Sales are off for a lot of companies these days. But one of the benefits of this company’s products is that using the products actually saves their customers money through increased efficiency, reduced error rates and better management of expenses. In fact, most customers find their product has paid for itself and started generating positive ROI within just a few months.

If you’re a cash-strapped company, this is the kind of ongoing savings that can make a real difference to your bottom line. So why were fewer and fewer companies apparently taking advantage of the potential savings?

Well, when we went back and reviewed their website copy, it became clear.

Their copy was pretty good in one sense — focusing on benefits, supporting those benefits with features, taking the time to explain the products thoroughly and offering plenty of supporting materials so customers could feel comfortable making a purchase.

The problem was, the copy in some cases hadn’t been updated in several years, so they weren’t speaking to the present-day concerns of their small business customers. They were highlighting their products’ convenience and ease of use, when customers were more concerned with business survival. They were speaking to how their products can seamlessly grow with the customer’s business, while their customer’s businesses were, in many cases, shrinking through scary and painful layoffs and furloughs. They were touting enhanced features, while customers were focused on cutting costs.

The economy has changed. The market has changed. What customers care about has changed. So now their copy needs to change.

So we’re working on a complete rewrite of their web store copy to target the benefits that are important to their market now. The features of their products haven’t changed, but the specific benefits we associate with those features — and the language we use to express those benefits — will.

If you find your copy isn’t getting the results you think it should, or if copy that used to get results has become less effective, it might be time for a refresher. Don’t assume you know what your customers are thinking about just because you did some market research awhile back. Stop, take a look around and see what your customers are concerned about today. It may not be the same thing(s) they were concerned about just yesterday.

When you want to power up your copy, remember verbs are your friends.

When I first started writing copy, like many new copywriters, I relied primarily on adjectives. This makes sense. It’s easy to come up with lists of favorable adjectives: comprehensive, cost-effective, delicious, rugged, economical, amazing. And adjectives are easy to use, even for a relatively inexperienced writer. Just add a handful in front of your nouns and you’re all set.

The problem with relying entirely on adjectives, though, is they’re weak. It takes a lot of them to get the point across, but use too many of them and your writing sounds over-hyped and phony.

Fortunately, as I gained experience with writing copy, I discovered the power of verbs. See, the cool thing about verbs is they get across the same ideas as all those adjectives, but they can do it in fewer words and with less of an impression of hype.

Of course, I still employ adjectives, too — it’s just that I no longer rely on them to do all the heavy lifting.

So, for example, at one time when I was writing about heavy-duty employee time clocks, I might simply have referred to them as “rugged” or “tough.” Now, I might still use those words to describe them, but I would reinforce those adjectives by also mentioning how these workhorses can “muscle through hundreds of print registrations per day.”

Or for a different nuance of meaning, I might instead say the clocks can “breeze through” all those print registrations. Notice how I can evoke an entirely different mood just by changing one verb: “muscle” to “breeze.” With the one, you get the impression these are some impressively hard-working clocks; with the other, you’d think they’re so tough they’re hardly breaking a sweat. Either one works; which I would choose would depend on the overall slant I’d chosen to take with my copy.

The point is: your choice of verbs make a huge difference. With the right verbs, you get your point across with minimal hype and maximum interest. So if you want to motivate action from your readers, I suggest you add some action to your writing.