Selling Features vs Selling Benefits

Nowadays, companies have learnt to sell benefits as opposed to features. The automaker industry being the exception.

The idea emerged back in the days when Nestle launched instant coffee. They were originally advertising the fact that it takes less time to make coffee when using instant coffee, which did not work.
From then on they re-thought their strategy and decided to focus on the benefits, not the features. They then advertised it this way:

"instant coffee gives you more time to _______."

At the time, women where the primary buyers in a household and they were sold and finding more time to iron, cook or care for their husband.

It's out of date, I know. Yet it teaches us a valuable lesson that marketing today is not selling a product but rather a solution to a problem.

2 comments:

Daniel Oyston said...

Your right Morgan, that women where the primary buyers in a household is dated but the theory still holds true.

Marketing is a response to a need or a problem of the consumer. Then we build a product, price it, find somewhere to sell it and then promote it (sound familiar, 4 Ps?).

Often marketers forget the why of how a product came to be. If you focus on the why then you will focus on the benefits (and not the features) when advertising.

Morgan Coudray said...

that's right Daniel. But believe it or not, in Canada, in double income families, 53% of the primary grocery buyers are males!!!