Think Like a Reader

How to find benefits, not features

Ask these questions in the interview

Having trouble finding reader benefits? Maybe you need to ask different questions.

Ask your subject matter experts:

What happens if our customers buy this product or service?

How to define features and benefits

Focus on the reader’s needs

If you were giving away a Hawaiian vacation to people who signed up for your webinar, which would you lead with?… Read the full article

Avoid fake benefits of the product

No ‘Pat yourself on the back for choosing us’

“Clean your face,” demands a hotel soap wrapper. No, YOU clean YOUR face! I want to respond.… Read the full article

What are benefits of a product?

Make money, save money, save time

Freud might never have figured out what a woman wants. But savvy communicators know what readers want — information that helps them:

Make money
Save money
Save time
Avoid effort
Increase satisfaction
Protect possessions
Be sexy
Escape pain
Increase comfort
Improve health
Impress people
Be stylish
Avoid trouble
Increase confidence
Enhance popularity
Save space
Be up-to-date
Protect investments
Gain praise
Avoid criticism
Increase convenience
Become more loved and accepted
Be successful
Escape routine
Own beautiful things
Have fun
Increase pleasure
Protect the environment
Satisfy curiosity
Protect family
Be happy
Feel safer and more secure
Avoid fear
Save energy
Conform with others
Be individualistic
Increase comfort
Satisfy appetites
Seize opportunity
Avoid mistakes
Gain knowledge
Achieve exclusivity
Improve status
Avoid guilt
Protect reputation
Be attractive

Which of these benefits could you use in your campaign?… Read the full article

How to turn features into benefits

Lead with the benefit, substantiate with the feature

I once reviewed an article for a company’s sales force with the headline:

Extraordinary customer experience: Be a customer advocate.

… Read the full article

The difference between features and benefits?

Benefits are verbs; features are nouns

Remember Verb, the superhero on “Schoolhouse Rock”? He was great because he could do so many things.

His theme song went like this:

I get my thing in action (Verb!)

… Read the full article

How to craft reader-centered writing

Use you for all audiences, channels

You. It’s a power tool of communications.

The second person increases readability, boosts opens and clickthroughs and is the most retweeted word in the English language.… Read the full article

Writer centered vs. reader centered writing

Stop We-We-ing on reader

It feels so good to talk about ourselves.

Talking about yourself activates the same pleasure centers in the brain as food, money or sex, according to Harvard neuroscientist Diana Tamir and her colleague Jason Mitchell, whose research on the topic was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.… Read the full article