Features, benefits, value. A sales page usually revolves around these three elements. You use these to introduce your products or services to potential buyers, online and offline.
And while the most natural thing to do would be describing the product in question, there is a problem with solely focusing on this approach — it does not sell. Only listing the features of an item will simply bore your customers out, and you will lose their attention.
If you want to close the deal, you need to start with the benefits.
Think about the value your product brings to the life of your customers, and begin from here. Sure, you will actually have to describe the product features down the line, because people want to know what they are buying.
But the trick is to do that only once the customer is already convinced to buy what you are selling. You can even bring in the value bit towards the very end to sweeten the deal.
Forget selling, even if you are giving something away, you will notice much better results if you pitch in the benefits first, and then the highlight the features. Take an example of a technical report that you are offering to visitors of your website in return for them to sign up for your mailing list.
Report A, for instance, starts with these points:
- 19 pages of content
- Instantly downloadable
- Illustrations, graphs and charts
Report B, on the other hand, lists these first up:
- Techniques on how to bring more traffic to your website
- 5 ways to engage with social traffic
- Increase sales and subscriptions at the same time
Very basic example, but if you had to read one page, chances are you would choose Report B.
And herein lies the logic. Customers don’t really want your product, they want the benefits it brings. And if you can outline them, and clearly explain the advantages, then you will have people that will be ready to take action. After all, this is what they are looking for.
Having said that, there are niches and industries where features take preference to benefits — travel industry for example. In this case, it is all a matter of choosing what to focus on first.
And to what extent.