When you can do "your thing" in your industry so easily that it's like it's breathing because it's just THAT natural to you…

There's a mistake you're likely making. Here's the scoop:

Experts have it hard to convey the VALUE of what they do.

Why? 'Cuz as an expert, YOU know exactly WHY your stuff is so valuable.

NEWS FLASH: Your audience DOES NOT.

I don't wanna be a jerk, but they don't care about what your service can do. They care about what your product or service can do FOR THEM. 
This episode is a mini-class on how to effectively communicate the IMPACT AND VALUE of what you offer…

So it: 

1. resonates with your audience 
2. compels them to take action. 

It's a fundamental marketing concept called Features vs. Benefits, and when you understand it, you WILL TRANSFORM your marketing strategy, copy, and content.

It doesn't matter if you create sales pages, emails, or social media content. What I teach in this episode of Content Creation Made Easy gives you the POWER to 

-write better copy, more easily

- connect with your audience, more easily

- and shift 'em into clients, more easily!

Stop struggling with "Am I doing this right?!" 

Grab a QuickWin Power 1:1 Session to get my eyes on YOUR copy, your content, and your benefits - 

https://www.jenliddy.com/power

In an hour, I'll show you how to make every thing you ever write WAYYYYY more effective SO YOU CAN use it to shift your audience into CLIENTS. 

**Thank you for taking a moment & telling us how this podcast helps make your content life easier!

We so appreciate listener comments and reviews because this stuff does NOT have to be complicated. Your valuable review helps us share this information with many more people's ears. 

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Full Transcript

Jen Liddy

Hey you, welcome to Content Creation Made Easy. I am your host, Jen Liddy. Today I'm teaching you something. It's really a fundamental concept about marketing that a lot of people don't understand. 

I'm gonna admit it took me a long time to understand it myself. It's something called Features and Benefits. And I'm gonna be unpacking it for you today. And when you understand what I'm teaching, it's really an enormous game changer in any kind of content you're creating. 

So let's jump in. The reason I'm teaching this today is that you are an expert in your space. You can do the thing that you do like it's breathing. You really don't have to think about it. 

You understand the deep nuances of your work. You understand how the work that you do, the knowledge you have, the expertise that you bring to the table, how it affects your potential clients, your potential customers, and sometimes in your content you can get lost in your own expertise.

This is something that I see happening with people who have a huge body of work behind them or a lot of training, or many, many years of experience. I'm not talking about using industry jargon here. I'm not talking about that kind of copywriting shift that we need to make. 

I'm talking about how when we have a deep level of expertise in our thing and a lot of experience, we assume that our audiences understand how the services we provide and how what we do can actually help them. 

Because we as experts in our thing, we can get lost in explaining the features of what we sell versus unpacking the benefits of how those positively impact the life of our clients. I'm gonna explain exactly what this means. 

So in marketing, understanding features versus benefits is a vital foundation for successful messaging. The thing is, it's hard to understand because it's very nuanced. And a lot of people come into marketing themselves without having marketing training. 

That was my experience and I walked around for a long time not understanding the difference between features and benefits. 

So since you're an expert and you probably haven't been trained in marketing but have somehow been expected to be a marketing and content and copywriting and messaging expert, today I'm unpacking this for you. 

It's a foundational, vital aspect and that you're going to understand the difference between how this marketing tenet, 

A) affects how easily and effectively you'll be able to write copy and create messaging, no matter what you are writing in your business, whether it's a sales page or a homepage or an email to your list, whatever it is, you're going to understand better how to write copy more easily. 

And 

B) you're going to be able to affect how your audience understands you, is able to absorb everything that you know and everything that you have to say and can shift more easily into becoming clients and customers. 

So that's our goal, that's why we're doing content, that's why we're doing marketing, so that's our ultimate goal. 

So I wanna go back to 2013 when I was transitioning from being an English professor into owning a business for the first time.

Now, I had to learn all this marketing stuff because when you're a teacher, you don't really have to market yourself. But I had now owned a fitness studio and I was running it with two partners. My job was communications, marketing, content writing, etc. 

I've spoken many, many times before on this podcast about how–befuddled is a good word–marketing made me feel. I would consume hours and hours of marketing podcasts and everybody was like, “Oh, it's just so easy. It's just so easy.” 

But they wouldn't give you any real hows or explanations. And it really made me crazy. One of the things that really took me a long time was this idea of features versus benefits, which is why I'm highlighting it on the podcast today. 

Features and benefits are marketing terms that I couldn't wrap my head around. But here's how I finally grasped it. 

Features are the factual aspects of your offer. 

They're kind of like things you would include, inclusions or specs is another way that you could think about it. 

They tell people what they get. Features are all about the WHAT. Features tell. 

So say that I offered a funnel-fixing content consulting package, right? Some of the features I might include would be:

• You get five one-to-one sessions with me
• You get Voxer access to me between calls
• You get a complete audit of your website, your landing page, your lead magnet, and your welcome series

So those are the things that you get. They tell you what the audience gets. To an expert, that feels like it's enough because experts are thinking: 

“Dude, don't you know how valuable five one-to-one sessions with me would be?”

“Don't you know how awesome having Voxer access between calls is?”

“Don't you know having a complete audit of your funnel roadmap would be like a game changer for you?”

And the thing is: NO! Your audience does not. That's your job to make them understand in your content. 

So features tell but they don't actually sell because no one is plunking hundreds or thousands of dollars down to simply have five sessions with me or just to have Voxer access to me or just to get access to some recordings I made. 

No matter how valuable you know these are, your audience doesn't get it, and it's your job to unpack it for them. 

Now, understanding this was, it took me years–I'm not kidding–to really wrap my head around this. 

So that's why I wanted to break it down for you, so you get it way sooner than I did, because once you understand that your audience doesn't get how valuable your features are, it's a game changer in your marketing. That's where benefits come in.

Benefits basically explain to your audience the WHY–why your features are so valuable or important to them. 

Benefits answer the question:

• What's in it for me? 
• Why should I care about this? 
• How will this make my life better? 

Benefits create a compelling personal reason for your audience to take action, because benefits help your audience see the possibility of how your service can impact their life.

Benefits are how they see the potential transformation available to them. Features don't do that. It's the difference between saying: 

‘You're gonna get an hour one-to-one with me,’ 

and saying

‘In an hour, we're gonna pore through your entire website homepage and revise it so your audience knows exactly which service to choose and be able to buy more easily and more frequently.’ 

Suddenly an hour with me sounds a hell of a lot more compelling and more appealing because you know what's in it for you. Not only a better website, but the reason you want a better website is to sell more stuff. 

Features tell, but benefits sell. So if features are the what about your offer, benefit statements help your audience understand the why behind your thing. As in:

• Why should I care about this? 
• Why should I buy it? 
• Why should I spend my time, energy, and money on it?

So as experts, you deeply know the implications for why people should engage with your services. You already know that in your bones. Because your audience doesn't, you have to spell it out for them basically. 

Not because they're not smart, but it's just not their job to do the work and make the connections. That's our job as experts who suddenly have to become marketing, copy and content experts, right? 

It reminds me of back when I taught high school and college English.

In their papers, my students would think they were making some great, clear, amazing, insightful point, and in their mind, things made total sense, like, two plus two plus two plus two equals eight, right? 

But as the reader, their grand ideas were just simply hints to me, they were whiffs of insights, or they were just like statements that didn't land for me or make any sense to me.

Maybe they were kind of little droppings, but they didn't expound or explain them. So what they were doing was expecting me to put all of their ideas together and see the bigger picture and make it mean something and understand what they were trying to prove. 

But that was not my job as their reader. It's not my job to put two and two and two and two together and make it work. It's their job, it's always the author's or writer's or creator's job to unpack the connections and the insights for our audience. 

It would drive me crazy too!

I would be like, “How does this prove your thesis? Why are you saying this? What does this mean? Why is this important?” And those would be the comments that I would leave. 

Then one student gave me a gift one time and said he thought it was insulting to unpack his thoughts and ideas for me to make it clear. He's like, “You're so smart, I just assumed you would make the connection for yourself.”

And I was like, “Well, that's flattering, and that's a good point.” And our audiences are smart too, but they are also overwhelmed, overloaded with information, and they have a lot on their minds, and they don't know what you know, right? 

They can't always make the dots connect just from the hints that you drop about something. So they don't always take the time to see the connections, but they also don't always also have the knowledge that you have.

Your job is to make them understand why it matters and how it could impact their life. So these are the things you wanna start focusing on in your content. So let's talk about some examples. Let's use fitness as an example. 

I saw my gym was promoting the features of what's going on in their gym. It was a social media post and they were like:

• We've got 25 classes a week that you can choose from
• You can do Pilates or yoga or bootcamp or spinning
• You can choose personal training; and 
• You can choose to get unlimited classes for $199 a month. 

Those are all features. They just tell me what the gym is offering. But inside the gym, on the whiteboard, they had taken some time to unpack and outline the benefits of physical activity, of moving your body. 

It said “Physical activity makes your life better. Here's how.” 

• You can improve your energy
• Decrease fatigue
• Improve mood and self-esteem
• Get better sleep
• Improve cardiovascular fitness. 

It had all of these reasons WHY. And I thought that was a good start. 

The messaging wasn't just ‘Come work out, we have 25 classes a week you can choose from, it'll cost you $199 a month.’ 

The benefits actually spoke to why it matters: Improve energy, reduce risk for chronic disease, et cetera. 

But I actually wanna teach you a secret today that a lot of people don't know about with three little words…

How you can take even the general generic benefits like improve energy, increase sleep…

And make them better and unpack them even more for your audience so they are more connected to you with three small words that make an enormous difference. 

The three small words are, ‘SO YOU CAN’. 

Now listen to the difference that they make in the impact of how an audience might hear it. 

Choose one of our 25 weekly in classes to improve your energy so you can:

• Get through the day without wondering how soon you can go back to bed 
• Stop waking up every morning feeling exhausted and cranky
• Feel excited again to see your friends rather than choosing to stay home and nap
• Play with your kids instead of watching them play
• Get back to your favorite hobbies instead of sitting on the sidelines

Now, I just took one of those benefits, ‘improve your energy,’ and I added the ‘so you can’ on it, and I thought about what people would want to do with more energy and I just unpacked it and I got five options right there. 

Doesn't that make it more compelling for why you'd wanna go to the gym and move your body? That's just me spitballing the benefits of one of seven reasons they said you should move your body. 

So I want you to understand the benefits are innumerable, maybe even infinite, based on your offer and the features that you have for your specific audience, what they want, what they're struggling with, etc. 

This little three word phrase, "so you can", makes an enormous difference to help your audience connect with you, see the potential for themselves, understand like, ‘Oh, this person really gets my problem and has a solution for me.’ 

And it helps them know why your offer is worth their time, money, and energy, right? The bottom line here is, ultimately, your audience, I don't mean to be a jerk, but they don't really care about what your product or service can do. 

They care about what your product or service can do for them, that is it. What's in it for me is what everybody is thinking. So unpacking the benefits is a vital part of your content strategy and writing copy to make it all very clear is super important. 

So here's how to do it. 

1. List out the features of your service or your offer.

Pull out all the little pieces and parts of what you offer and really look at them. Those are the what's. For each one, bullet point all the ways, and I mean get creative, get risky, take a chance, and think about how each feature helps, benefits, or assists your particular audience, your particular ideal client. 

Consider the unseen short-term outcomes and long-term outcomes, because sometimes you really have to pull that out and make them see. Like when I say, imagine having enough energy to play with your kids versus putting them on a screen. 

That might be something that your people really have a pain point about, and that could be something they haven't either seen or thought of or admitted yet, right? So weave these features into your content.

You don't have to unpack every feature at the same time, but you can take a feature and marry it with a benefit with that three-word phrase, ‘so you can.’ 

And you can just talk about these pieces and parts in your content all the time, say like social media content or email content, stuff that you do weekly, but this is the kind of stuff that's going to really add a pow to your homepage, to your sales page, to your landing pages where you want people to take action.

Now, if this all makes sense to you and you're like, "Oh my God, I totally get this! Features tell, benefits sell! I understand I can weave this into my content"...

But you don't know HOW YOU'LL actually do it… 

Or when you go to do it, you go to create some benefit statements, you feel like, “Oh, this made so much sense, but I can't actually do it.” 

That's very typical and normal. 

There's so many things when it comes to marketing, content and messaging that we're like, I get it, but I'm really having a hard time translating it and making it work for me.

That's where you're gonna wanna grab a QuickWin Power Session. I put these on my calendar for most months. There's some you can choose from. You go over, we have a session where I give you personalized feedback of pulling the benefits out of your head and showing you exactly how to use them so your audience will buy instead of scroll or delete or pass you by. 

The purpose of these one personalized sessions, these one-to-one personalized sessions, is so you can:

• Stop worrying that you're doing marketing wrong
• Get out of the time suck of content creation 

Because you'll just have my eyes on it showing you teaching you giving you feedback and you'll actually walk away with an arsenal of information, approaches, and actual content that you can use over and over and over again because once you learn how to do this, you can use it in every marketing asset you have from lead magnets to landing pages to your videos whatever you're doing.

So if you want a one-to-one session, go to JenLiddy.com/Power, grab a session and I'll teach you exactly how to write benefit statements that work for you and your audience so they'll care about what you're saying and they'll connect with you and so you can continue to do it in the future. 

Now if you rewind 15 seconds, you will hear everything I just said was infused with benefit statements. It wasn't just like go get an hour with me, it's go get an hour with me so you can. 

So a one hour session with me so you can 

• create an arsenal of content you can use over and over, 
• improve every marketing asset you'll ever create, 
• learn how to do this yourself so you'll never struggle again, 
• stop having content take so long, 
• make your marketing more effective so your audience buys instead of just reads.  

I'm giving you examples and I'm showing you how. And if this isn't enough and you want my eyes on yourself, go get a session at JenLiddy.com/Power. 

So how can you take everything that I taught you today and unpack the benefits for your audience and help them see how your expertise actually serves them so they can overcome their problem, achieve their goal, and have the thing that they really want. 

Help them see beyond the features of your offer. So again, if you want help, go to JenLiddy.com/Power and grab some support. And if you give this a try, I would love to know how it works for you. 

If you could leave me a review, let me know what your thoughts are. I would love to hear from you. And you can always email me at [email protected]. I will see you next time. 

Thank you so much for showing up and listening all the way through. You're amazing. And I will talk to you in the next episode. Bye.