Focus on the benefits that resonate with your audience

1. Survey existing customers about specific benefits that resonated with them and convinced them to buy.

Conduct basic audience research using a segment of your audience that has made a purchase in the past 3-6 months as recent purchasers will more accurately reflect your current marketing messaging, the state of your current marketing funnel, and the current version of your product or service. Consider the following audience research strategies and approaches: One on one customer interviews in person, online or via phone. Customer surveys that pop up after someone checks out of your store. Email surveys to individuals marked in your CRM or email platform as being a recent customer. Tools like Typeform and SurveyMonkey have pre-built audience research surveys.  Ask open ended questions that focus on benefits, such as: What was one problem you were trying to solve when you found us? What is one feature in our service that you can’t live without? What is your favorite aspect of our product?

2. List your target audience’s main pain points in a comparison grid.

Refer to your pre-existing market research or buyer personas, or compare the solutions in your industry, yours and your competitors, against the problems they attempt to solve. Pain points can be grouped into several broader categories: Financial: Spending too much money on their current product and want to reduce their spend. Process: Wanting to improve internal processes like nurturing lower priority leads or assigning leads to sales reps. Productivity: Wasting lots of time using their current product or want to use their time more efficiently.  Support: Not getting the support they need at crucial stages of the sales process or customer journey. A comparison grid can show where there are overlapping and different benefits between you and competitors. Consider making before and after grids where you discuss what your customer has before and after using your product, including how it changes their average day, status, and outcomes.

3. List your product's features that resolve your target audience’s pain points.

If applicable, highlight any pain points that your features don’t cover. These can either be suggested to the product team as new features to help close the gap, or you can position your brand as a specialist solution that covers deep problem sets rather than broad ones.

4. Interview your sales team, product development staff, and customer service team to identify customer confusion or misalignment about your product benefits.

Ask questions such as: What is the top reason people say they switch to our services? What is the main thing someone is trying to solve when they buy our product? What is the greatest misconception about our product that people talk to you about? Compare your list of benefits to the most common concerns or needs mentioned by your audience to your internal staff. This step will help identify misalignment from the stated benefits of your brand and your competitors, and the actual pain points of the audience.

5. Build a features-benefit matrix from the features list you’ve compiled using free worksheet templates online or by drawing your own grid.

A matrix will help you ensure your messaging is consistent, accessible and relevant to end users. A feature-benefit matrix is formatted as grids with one column for features, several more for benefits, like benefit A, benefit B, benefit C, and other additional columns for CTAs or specific messaging data points.

6. Write copy to reframe the benefits as results the customers will experience when using your product or service.

The two most effective ways to do this are with verifiable quantitative values, such as see an increase of 50%, and social proof such as testimonials.

7. Highlight specific features on your product details page.

Mention feature names where appropriate, but don’t bog down the copy with lengthy explanations, such as how a feature works. Save those for the feature’s page if applicable; those that want additional information will look there anyway, and those that don’t will appreciate your succinctness.

8. Conduct A/B testing to determine which benefits resonate most readily with users.

This can be done manually by your web development team, or using a number of A/B testing tools available online. For example, HubSpot’s A/B Testing Kit, VWO, Optimizely, and Crazy Egg. Remember to only change one element at a time for each A/B test, as multiple simultaneous alterations will muddy the results.

9. Refine the discussion of benefits in the copy using the insights gained from A/B testing.

Revisit your A/B testing regularly, and make any necessary revisions to stay properly targeted on the pain points they care about most.