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Don't always believe that bit about sell the benefits, not the features. It depends on your target market. Robert Bly, author of The Copywriter's Handbook et al
by nhebb 15y ago
Don't always believe that bit about sell the benefits, not the features. It depends on your target market. Robert Bly, author of The Copywriter's Handbook et al., has written several good pieces on marketing to technical people. In one, he described how he fell flat "selling the benefits" in marketing high performance cars. It's an audience that craves features and doesn't give a rat's ass about glib benefit-speak. I don't have a link for that one, but here's a great piece about marketing to engineers:
http://www.bly.com/Pages/documents/STIKFS.html http://www.bly.com/Pages/documents/STIKFS.html
- tptacek 15y agoThe majority of the market for high-performance cars does not (and cannot) appreciate the major features of those cars. How many BMW buyers really understood the difference between the US and the Euro manifold, or understand the different kinds of variable valve timing systems? My point here is, it may not be that the tech market wants to be sold based on features and not benefits; instead, it may be just that he was selling the wrong benefits. It is a benefit (albeit one we tend to be derisive about) to have the most feature-packed, cutting-edge, sophisticated variant of something. To make the case for that benefit, you probably have to name lots of features. But that's not the same thing as marketing based on features. For instance, the specific features you market may not matter, so long as you exceed the bar for "enough awesome sounding features to be the feature-leader in your category".