Most people repeat the idea of selling benefits instead of features, but the real unlock is selling workflows. When Steve Jobs introduced the first iPod, he didn’t talk about storage or tech specs.
He painted a picture of how life would feel with the product in your routine. That simple line, “1,000 songs in your pocket,” showed a new daily reality. It replaced burning CDs. It replaced carrying bulky players. It made music effortless. That’s what people buy.
They buy the version of themselves with an easier day. If you can describe how someone’s workflow improves the moment your product enters their life, your copy lands every time. Focus on the after state, not the hardware. That's how you create your own “1,000 songs in your pocket.”
It depends.
If you're trying to sell coffee in China, you can't sell the features or benefits as Chinese people already drink tea - they've already got a hot drink which gives them a caffeine boost. Therefore you sell using an emotional message - coffee drinkers are sophisticated, international, modern.
If you're trying to sell a training course to an engineer, you focus on the features, as they're more likely to make a rational decision.
If you're trying to sell a hairdryer to a teenage girl, you focus on the benefits - beautiful hair, positive attention, feel confident. Something like that.
So it's not a one size fits all.
Zero people buy logically, they justify with logic.
You don't sell on features, you sell on the emotional benefit and outcome of a feature.
My favorite is selling to sophisticated markets who think they buy logically... They're very emotional, just like all humans.
I think that’s too broad.
For example, you can sell on features when your features are better than your competitors’ features.
Features always have an emotional benefit and outcome.
There's always a 'why'
Just finished writing a sales page for a very sophisticated market.
A.i and ML engineers who want to store vector databases, and train their own models.
Testing both storage and compute with no emotional outcome language 5% boost in conversion.
Adding storage uptime language plus what smart developers do 30% bump in conversion on higher end packages.
A highly sophisticated market full of PhD's want recognition for all the school they went to.
Identity, outcome tied to feature destroyed feature only language.
OK, but that's kind of an extreme way to look at it.
vs
The first advert wins because it has better features.
You may argue it's because it satisfies some emotional benefit and outcome, but it's a better feature.
Huh...
Those aren't adverts.
They’re adverts focusing on features, not benefits. Obviously they’re not complete adverts with images, all the copy, etc.
Wasn’t there an effort to sell coffee in Japan? It started with coffee flavored candy for kids and when they grew up they were nostalgic for the flavor and started drinking coffee
I didn't know that. But if true, that's kind of genius/evil...
Nestlé go figure
Also a 12 to 15 year marketing plan before it generates revenue. How do you sell that to upper management?
Well I mean they're selling candy, so it's not like charity work
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Homie you’re just rebranding benefits as workflow. Why complicate something that is so inherently simple?
Taking a really long time to do it too
I will never understand marketing’s desire to complicate things that are not that complicated. 1000 songs in your pocket is a benefit. Yes, it is a unique one. Yes, the process of arriving at that insight may have been complicated. But leave that up to the copywriter. Keep benefits benefits and your briefs short.
If somebody's writing a post on marketing and its more than a sentence or two, I think they don't know about marketing 😂
One thing I like doing in meetings is ask basic but pointed questions. Half the time, it reveals that stakeholders don’t know what they’re trying to accomplish, who they’re talking to, or what needs to be done to achieve the goal. Not always. But often.
I'm glad I'm not the only one that thought so too. And more songs in your pocket is not a workflow improvement anyways? If anything, that is a technical feature.
The feature is the large storage capacity (by that time’s standard). The benefit is you get 1000 songs in your pocket.
Actually Steve Jobs would go on and on about tech specs, but only after hitting the "benefits" and painting a picture of how you can use it.
This post still misses the point.
How so. Do tell.
That workflow should still provide benefits, no? Otherwise, I don't think that's what I want to sell.
And, if I'm providing benefits, I don't care if people call that workflows or something else. If I try to think about my own workflows, I guess I'm just making it harder than it should be. I still want benefits, workflow or not.
It's funny... I was reviewing some copy about Apple's business model earlier today that was partially written by ChatGPT, and the write said many of the same things with almost the exact same syntactic patterns.........
You must be traumatized by the "—." It's ok friend. Me too.
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The way I learned this was "features, benefits, experience." So, to me, the iPod brand promise/ad tagline was about the experience of owning an iPod, what life would be like with one in your pocket--it went beyond features or even benefits.
Surely 1.000 songs in your pocket is just a more elegant way of selling a feature - big storage capacity?
"If you can describe how someone’s workflow improves the moment your product enters their life..." = dimensionalzing benefit
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Benefits are overrated. Features are what your engineers care about
Your customers care about CAPABILITIES. What can they do today, with the product, that they couldn't do yesterday without it?
Thanks chatgpt