Section 9 The 4 Levels of Features and Benefits

You’ve heard it before: when advertising your product, stress features instead of
benefits. But it’s a little more complicated than that. To be accurate, product factsaren’t just divided into one of two categories features or benefits. Experienced
marketers know that there are four levels of production description.These are

features, advantages, benefits, and ultimate benefits. The more you understand
and use all four levels and not just benefits in your advertising,
the more effective your advertising will be. Let’s look at these four levels….

The lowest level is features. A “feature” is what a product is or has the literal
physical description of the product.For instance, a feature of a tire is that it is steel‐belted. Another might be that it is double ply.
Often, despite what experts tell you about “stress benefits, not features,” a featu
re can be a selling point…even if the prospect doesn’t know what it is! For in
stance, when I was a kid, brochures for the new car models coming out would
boast about “rack and pinion” steering. The car makers hyped it so much, every
one asked dealers, “Does the car have rack and pinion steering?

Yet I bet not one buyer in a hundred really knew what rack and pinion steering was.

I still don’t, to this day.
Next, there are advantages.
An “advantage” is a feature that your product has that competitive pro
ducts don’t have. You know that to get consumers interested in your
product, you must show how your product is different than competing
products.
The advantage is that point of differentiation….
For our tire example, that might be that our tire is the only steel‐belted
radial tire that also has double ply.
Moving up the hierarchy, the next level of product description is benefits.

A “benefit” is what the product does…and how the consumer comes out ahead
as a result of this capability. Going back to our tire example, again, the benefit of a steel‐belted double ply radial might be that the tire grips the road tighter and in
creases safety while driving.Or that it can drive for another 100 miles even after
being punctured before you have to change it. At the top of the product descrip
tion hierarchy is what I call ultimate benefits. An “ultimate benefit” is “the benefit of the benefit”…the most important way in
which the product improves the user’s life. Ultimate benefits include saving mo
ney…saving time…making money…success…self‐esteem…security…safety…
joy…pleasure…happiness. Remember the TV commercial for the tire showing a
baby sitting in the middle of a tire? That’s an example of showing the ultimate be
nefit…which simply put is, “If you buy our tires, you won’t kill your baby.”


In business‐to‐business marketing, a benefit might be “reduces energy costs.”
The ultimate benefit is often “makes you a hero within your company”…
Meaning if you achieve the benefit by purchasing the product, senior manage
ment will look upon you favorably. To make your copy richer, deeper, and more
credible, don’t just talk about benefits. Instead, use all four levels of product des
cription: features, advantages, benefits, and ultimate benefits. For instance, ulti
mate benefits are powerful, they are too generic…not specific enough.

To give your advertising specificity, state the specific benefit (e.g., “reduces ener
gy costs 50%”) that delivers the ultimate benefit (“you’ll be the hero of your com
pany”). To differentiate your product from others that deliver a similar benefit,
you need to explain the advantages
how your product is different from or better than the competition.
Finally, there are the features….Lots of marketing seminars urge you to stress be
nefits instead of features…but you should use both.

Why?
People are skeptical that your product can deliver the benefits you promise…
because everyone is promising those same benefits.
When you show how a particular feature delivers the benefit, it becomes more
believable to the prospect.
For instance, if you tell the buyer your computer system never loses data, he
thinks, “How can that be?”
But when you describe the feature
that there is a built‐in tape drive…and that the system automatically backs up tothat tape drive daily then your claim becomes more believable. Believe it or not.