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I’m Nicolas Mérouze and you’re receiving this email because you’ve subscribed to my newsletter either on my website, on Twitter, on LinkedIn, or on Customer Fitted.

I had a debate on Twitter about product benefits.

1st mistake, debating on Twitter.

2nd mistake, thinking we had the same definition for “benefits”.

And it made me realize how complex it is to talk about benefits. There are many different kinds and it’s also often confused with advantages and even features.

So I decided to make this playbook so that it would be clearer to you and also to me.

Messaging glossary

I’m not including all the terms, but just the ones when there would be confusion without a proper definition.

Feature

→ A specific function or attribute of the product

“real-time gantt charts”

Advantage/Capability

→ Describes what the feature can do or enable for users (how it helps)

“track project progress”

NB: There are different definitions for advantages and capabilities but at the end there’s 99% intersection so I decided they’re the same.

Functional Benefit

→ Practical value or improvement that a feature/product provides to users.

“increase focus on high-impact activities”

Emotional Benefit

→ Positive feeling or psychological impact that users experience from using the feature/product.

“increase peace of mind”

Dream Outcome

→ Ideal result that customers aspire to achieve by using the feature/product.

“projects on time and under budget”

Result

→ Measurable or tangible outcome that customers can expect from using the feature/product.

“30% reduction in project delivery times”

Some notes:

• I’ve recently read that ”benefit is an emotional outcome” which is not true. It’s only a kind of benefit.
• Functional and emotional benefits can be either tangible or intangible. I added result to give an example about tangibility and introduce the concept independently. Result = tangible benefit.
• Advantage vs Capability — There are different definitions for advantages and capabilities but at the end there’s 99% intersection so I decided they’re the same.
• I separate dream outcome and benefits because the latter is the direct result of using the feature/product, the former is a possible state the customer might reach if they use the product in addition to everything else they’re doing.

It should be clear now that the “focus on benefits, not features” or vice versa lacks nuance (of course) but especially in the richness of messaging elements.

But wait, we’re just starting with nuance!

4 levels of features

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We tend to think of features mostly as technical or related to the product itself. But there are many more.

Also, “ease of use” is sometimes used as a benefit but it’s really more of a feature. We’ll see later how we can go from a feature like this to the benefit.

4 levels of problems

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Problems also can varying degrees of specificity and it’s important to adapt the way we talk about problems depending on the audience and product awareness.

Levels of benefits

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Then benefits also have more nuance. We tend to link 1 feature to 1 benefit but as we can see there are many chained benefits possible.

Less believable benefits like “increase revenue” are still okay to use, but it shouldn’t be the main benefit.

Because B2B products are mostly about that benefit, you should lead with something more differentiating.

Value nuggets

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Another way to move from feature to benefit but a bit more clunky in my opinion. Still useful exercise.

Here’s the example provided in the article.

For example, moving down by asking ‘how’:

• We help our clients hire the right candidates, faster (value)
• How? Clients can ensure candidates are a good cultural fit and have the right skills and attitude required for the role (benefit)
• How? Through our psychometric interview and report process (feature)
• How? Our customers see a 50% increase in employee performance (proof point)

And moving up, asking ‘why’:

• Our customers see a 50% increase in employee performance with our product (proof point)
• Why? By using our psychometric interview and report process (feature)
• Why? To ensure candidates are a good cultural fit and have the right skills and attitude required for the role (benefit)
• Why? So our clients can hire the right candidates, faster (value)

FAB model

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As we’ve started to see, messaging elements are related to each other. This simple model is simpler to use than the previous one links. But also incomplete.

Messaging canvas

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The issue with the other models is the lack of relation with problems.

And for someone like me who loves hammering down problems for emotional resonance, this canvas is much better.

Needs stack

Another framework but not directly related to messaging. It’s about understanding all the needs of the target customer.

It resembles the chain of features to benefits, but in a higher level.

Example of a needs stack:

★ Get lucrative speaking gigs around the world.

→ Become a popular content-producer, leading to a book deal.

→ Have a personal website for content and self-promotion.

→ Set up a WordPress site.

→ Buy infrastructure: web server, disk space, networking, database.

And the reason why it’s important to use in complement to the messaging frameworks I’ve listed above.

​Source​

Conclusion: Messaging is HARD.

There are so many nuances and subtleties.

But with this glossary and frameworks, you should now have a lot more tools in you belt to write copy that converts.

Of course, it would be meaningless without a proper ICP.

So I leave you with this tweet.

Dmytro Krasun @DmytroKrasun Block or unfollow me, but I will keep repeating it—defining your ideal customer profile (ICP), even in vague terms will make your life so much easier. You won't understand why PostHog has feature flags, and web analytics in one product, till you understand who is their ICP.… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1815388986946318761 4:10 PM • Jul 22, 2024 33 Retweets 701 Likes Read 45 replies

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