How To Write An Effective Benefit Statement (A 7-Step Guide)
May 22, 2021 | Sean Foo
In a world where information overload is rampant and consumers are overstimulated with over-hyped claims, it is important to capture your audience’s attention fast.
In order to do that, you need to let them know how your solution will help them directly, without beating around the bush.
Want to achieve this?
Then you’ll need a powerful benefit statement.
A compelling and straightforward statement that cuts through the noise and makes it clear if your product or service is a good fit or not.
What Is A Benefit Statement?
Essentially, a benefit statement is a written description that clearly communicates the primary benefit of your product or service.
More often than not, these statements are typically one-liners for the ease of readability and to convince prospects to make a purchasing decision.
Before crafting your benefit statement, it is useful to know the distinct difference between a statement that is benefit-driven and one that is driven by features.
Features highlight the aspects, qualities, and uniqueness of your product. It is the nuts and bolts of your product – what it contains.
On the other hand, benefits emphasize how a customer’s current situation or experience can improve as a result of your product, service, or solution – this is exactly what you are going for!
While highlighting the features of your product is highly necessary, it should only be in the supporting role – the benefit should be the star of the show.
Your benefit statement should be speaking directly to the desires of your reader.
Why Are Benefit Statements Needed?
1. Customers get to know what’s in it for them in just a single sentence
Unfortunately for us humans, we have an attention span of 8 seconds – shorter than that of a goldfish!
That’s why quickly grabbing your audience’s attention at the outset is crucial if you’re trying to market a product or service, and benefit statements do just the trick.
Remember to avoid long-winded sentences and keep them short and sweet.
2. To educate your customers about needs they never knew existed
Customers may not know that they need your solution from the get-go.
To address this, you’ll need to make the problem at hand known to your audience, which will lead to them wanting a solution for it; and that’s you.
Once they realize that you have what they need to solve an underlying problem, they’ll naturally come running!
3. For customers to get a glimpse of what to expect
Benefit statements are like tiny hints that give customers context to what you have to offer.
Take Apple, for example.
Weeks before a new product launch, they churn out video ads, packed with benefit statements and messaging, that only show you glimpses of what to expect and not the full picture.
In turn, this makes tech enthusiasts excited and eager to find out what it is. Before you launch a product or service, sometimes the art of the tease can come in handy.
4. To build intrigue and desire, without giving the entire idea away
If you want to go wild and reveal your entire product and brand story to your audience, you’re better off doing that on your website’s ‘About’ page—that’s not what your benefit statement is for.
By giving your entire idea away, you leave your prospects with nothing left to look forward to.
A benefit statement gives away just the right amount of information to entice your customers yet still leave something to their imagination.
5. To build trust with your customers
Since consumer behaviors have changed drastically in today’s day and age, people are not as easily convinced as before.
Instead of relying on advertising efforts and bold claims to attract consumers, focus more on building trust with them.
This creates brand loyalty and connection that goes beyond a transactional relationship.
Use your statement to let your audience know that you understand them and want to provide an effective yet genuine solution to their problem.
Barkbox’s benefit statement, for example, clearly highlights to their readers what they are going to get straight up. No fancy words, just direct to the point.
7- Steps To Writing A Compelling Benefit Statement
1. Identify the biggest problem your customers are facing
This can be done through a myriad of methods including focus groups, surveys, and customer interviews.
Ask yourself these few questions:
- What is the single biggest problem they face in their lives (or business)
- How impactful is that problem? (If solved, will it turn their whole situation around?)
- If nothing else, would they pay money to have just that one single challenge solved?
From there, you’ll need to connect the problem to the benefit to show the value of your solution.
If you are unsure about your customer challenges, it’s time to revisit your customer personas with our two guides here – B2B customer personas and B2C customer personas.
2. List down the various benefits of your product or service
From there, the next step is to note down the various benefits that customers will enjoy from your solution.
For example, if you are developing a mobile app dedicated to personal health and fitness, one of the benefits for customers could be more time savings with a personalized mobile trainer and gaining access to an all-in-one health tool right at your fingertips.
In this list, select the one that has the biggest impact that encompasses all of your customer personas – that tackles the biggest problem they face.
While your solution may have multiple traits that make it attractive to your consumers, you’d only want to highlight the best one in your benefit statement to make it more objective.
3. Bring your customer to their ideal future
Now that you’ve narrowed it down to your top benefit, you want to sell this idea to your customers. Let them in on a sneak peek into a world where their problems have finally been solved all thanks to your business offering.
By giving them a glimpse of what to expect when they engage with your brand, it entices and pushes them closer to a purchasing decision.
An essential factor to note when coming up with your statement is not to give too much away.
You might still want to keep the intrigue and curiosity in your benefit statement that will encourage them to further explore the different pages on your website.
4. Make your benefits measurable
Bold claims are great, but they need to be authentic and believable.
If you can, incorporate numbers and figures to justify your claims on your statement to make them measurable.
These measured results can come from tests, reviews, and testimonials from customers.
The reason why using numbers in your benefit statement is highly effective is because there’s a science behind it; the use of numbers can actually drive sales conversions and influence customer behaviors.
5. Showcase the relevant feature(s) of your solution that makes the big benefit possible
At this point, you have determined your key benefit that is both measurable and ideal in solving your customer’s problem.
Now, this is where you really need to hone in on what you’re selling.
You have a unique product that can help your target audience. That’s great. But that doesn’t guarantee that there aren’t brands delivering a similar product or service as you.
If you have a unique selling point or competitive edge that your competitors lack, use that to your advantage.
Showcase the feature(s) that make the benefit possible. This way you set up a one-two punch that helps to appeal to both your reader’s emotional and logical brain.
6. Knock away and pre-emptively address any potential doubts they might have
When discovering a new brand, it’s only natural for customers to have their doubts and be skeptical about the benefits of your product at first.
That’s where you need to swoop in.
Before prospects can even begin to question what you’re offering, give them a reason to trust your brand from the get-go.
All it takes is a simple phrase to address or acknowledge a lingering doubt (that your solution solves) in your benefit statement.
7. Keep it concise, succinct, and to the point
To wrap it all up, the key to writing an effective benefit statement is to keep it short and sweet.
Think as if you were the consumer: you want something that grabs your attention in an instant.
Having a long-winded statement is only going to bore your consumers and drive them to other businesses that can get their message across more efficiently.
Ahrefs does a fantastic job with their benefit statement that doubles as their homepage’s headline.
Not only do that highlight two key benefits (higher SEO rankings and more traffic), they also address a key concern their prospects have – a worry of needing to be an SEO pro to benefit from their solution.
Where To Utilize Your Benefit Statement
If you have no idea where a benefit statement belongs, here are some common pages where you can showcase them on your website.
1. The hero section of your website homepage and landing page
Your website’s landing page is a customer’s first impression of your brand.
Besides having intuitive user design and effective copy, your benefit statement is one of the driving forces responsible for filtering your visitors’ attention, capturing those that will resonate with your value proposition.
Make sure your statement is as clear as a day.
Convertkit’s benefit statement here is to supplement their headline on their homepage’s hero section.
It highlights what is important to their prospects, converting their audience into fans, and strikes hard at a core motivation they have – earning a living as a creator.
2. The individual ‘Product’ or ‘Services’ pages
Besides the landing page, the ‘Product’ or ‘Services’ tabs are one of the most important pages on your website whose purpose is to reveal your product offerings and how they stand out from competitors.
When an accompanying statement is visible on this page, customers will constantly be reassured as to why they need your product.
To better educate their audience, Shopify has separate pages to showcase key aspects of their online eCommerce platform.
Their benefit statement here helps to clarify how their platform can help their users better sell online.
3. The ‘Pricing’ page
Your pricing can make or break your customer’s experience, especially if your products are priced higher than average.
Most people immediately shut off if a product or service is priced way above what they can afford, but that’s not always the case.
If you succeed in making your statement compelling, they’ll end up making a purchase either way, realizing that your brand is indeed providing a solution to a problem they are experiencing and is worth the investment.
When you are writing a benefit statement for your pricing page, you need to keep in mind that it has to persuade your reader to take action – that means the benefit(s) you showcase should directly correlate to your solution’s value.
Basecamp does this well on their pricing page by integrating key features such as ‘unlimited projects and users’ together with other benefits such as ‘no per user fees’, making the offer seem like a good value.
4. Your ‘How it works’ page
If a prospective customer makes it all the way to the ‘How it works’ page, chances are they’re halfway through the consumer buying process.
They probably clicked on the page because they want to find out more about your process and how it is delivered.
At this point, your statement here has to highlight your process but in the perspective of how it benefits your reader.
99design does this succinctly with their benefit statement on their ‘How it works’ page.
They go straight to the point of where the design work will come from and what their customers will get – design work from professionals.
3 More Benefit Statements To Draw Inspiration From
Now that you know how to create and where to use your benefit statements, let’s dive deeper into three awesome benefit statements done right from the world’s biggest brands.
1. Apple TV 4K’s Benefit Statement
To really hook in their readers, Apple packs in a wealth of information within the benefit statement for their Apple TV.
It ticks the boxes for highlighting both the benefits of convenience and the emotional payoff from using their product – a transformative experience.
2. Slack’s Benefit Statement
Slack’s headline doubles up as their benefit statement – concise and straight to the point.
What’s good about this statement is its pure focus on the end goals their customers desire without any fluff or over-explanation – that’s left for the supporting copy.
3. MailChimp’s Benefit Statement
When it comes to a playbook benefit statement, perhaps none is better than the one written on MailChimp’s home page.
Not only do they string the key desires of their readers in one succinct sentence, but they also manage to pre-empt & address one big obstacle that most prospects have – the fear of paying to give the platform a try.
A Great Benefit Statement Requires Great Copywriting Skills
Whether you’re a business owner, entrepreneur, or marketer, having an effective benefit statement can do wonders for your messaging.
However, that can only be achieved with a good set of writing skills.
If you think your writing could use some work, we have compiled a few resources from copywriting examples from notable global brands to the principles of B2B copywriting.
In no time, you’ll be able to come up with the perfect benefit statement for you and your business!
But if you’re looking to leave it to the wordsmiths to do the work for you, we can help out with that too.
