Stop Listing Your Program Features: Here’s How to List Benefits Instead
By sharing benefits vs features when talking about your nonprofit’s programs, you can raise more money, get more volunteers, and build more power for your organization. It all comes down to choosing the right words. This blog post will show you how!
Benefits not features
Nonprofit organizations warm my heart. They are incredibly passionate and, in most cases, effective at helping people and pushing for change.
But sometimes, as nonprofit leaders, it can feel like we are screaming into the abyss about our cause, with no one listening or taking action. Shouldn’t passion for our cause (and a great cause) compel people to get involved? Unfortunately, no.
When I started my nonprofit consulting practice, I had to learn marketing. There are some powerful lessons from the marketing world that nonprofits can use for free. These strategies can help you increase engagement and buy-in, meet your fundraising goals, recruit more volunteers, and get more people to take action for your cause.
So today, I want to show you one of the most effective and easy-to-implement lessons I’ve learned: How to shift from talking about “features” to talking about “benefits.”
What Is Nonprofit Marketing and What Can We Learn from Businesses?
The business world has long known that when it comes to marketing, describing benefits vs features delivers far better results.
Traditional business marketing tactics were designed to turn the general public into customers. Companies use marketing to move an audience from strangers (with persuasion) into customers (conversion). And then build a customer lifetime value (CLV) by getting them to become a repeat customer.
Even if nonprofits are not selling products, we are still trying to do the same thing as many businesses: bring strangers into our community and get them to care about our cause.
Most nonprofit organizations are public-facing and, therefore, have websites, E-blasts, printed materials, and other campaigns.
We want our audience to 1) care and 2) do something.
“We want our audience to 1) care and 2) do something. ”
This may include opening our emails, reading them, forwarding them, clicking on calls to action, telling others about our messages, registering for our educational webinars, enrolling in our classes or trainings, donating, and more.
These calls to action (CTAs) “convert” people from inaction to action. By converting people from passive strangers or outsiders into the organization, we bring them “into the tent,” so to speak, and begin moving them up a “ladder of engagement.”
Many of us have heard about the power of storytelling in nonprofit communications and are always on the lookout for stories and testimonials that show our work in action.
When it comes to describing what we do and why, though, too many nonprofits still rely on lists of programs and activities (aka features). In many cases, this ends up dull and unclear in how it relates to the reader or listener. It’s time for a change!
Benefits vs Features: What is the difference?
How are features and benefits different?
Features are facts about products or services. They may just be names of products, services, or programs.
Benefits help people see that the product/service/solution/program helps alleviate something causing them grief or discomfort. Benefits show how your life will improve once the problem is solved.
Luckily, nonprofits are here to solve problems. And our work is intentionally designed to benefit our target communities.
Describing benefits starts with understanding the problem we aim to solve and how it affects our audiences. For example, those who directly benefit from our programs have problems they need to solve. Potential donors have problems they want to solve (injustice, disease, pollution, etc.). Volunteers often want to be involved in solving problems that resonate with them.
A fundamental marketing principle is to understand your audience’s pain points and then speak to those pain points.
“A fundamental marketing principle is to understand your audience’s pain points and then speak to those pain points. ”
Speaking to your audience’s pain points gets them to pay attention > care > stay engaged > open/click/forward > fill out a form > join a cause > donate > and become a leader.
For nonprofits to move people along this path, they must connect the audience's pain points with solutions – in other words, benefits.
Examples of Benefits vs Features in Business
Here is how a law firm may list their “features” on their website
“We help with Wills, Estates, Traffic Violations, Divorce”
But this company would be better served explaining what they do in the form of benefits to the audience with pain points.
Instead of “Wills,” they should say, “We help guarantee your loved ones are provided for after you pass, with documents that help others honor your wishes.”
Instead of “traffic violations,” they should say, “We help you and the young drivers in your family keep a clean record, so you save money and can drive without limitations.”
Can you see the difference between features and benefits?
Here is another example.
Feature: “Our pencils have a hexagonal shape.”
Benefit: “It won’t roll off your desk!”
How to Turn Features Language into Benefits Language
“One trick I love to convert features language into benefits language is to ask the question “So what?” or “So that you can do…what?” or “So that you can feel…what?” after listing a feature. ”
Persuasive copy requires a mix of features and benefits. One useful marketing article, asks us to imagine we’re selling an oven. One of its special features is a fast preheat system. Fast pre-heating is a feature because it’s a fact about the oven – it explains what the oven does. The benefit is that “Dinner is served faster, so you can relax with your family.”
Example: To define a benefit, you ask yourself, “So that I can?” Here is the process you can apply to any feature to make it a benefit.
“The oven preheats quickly.”
“So what?”
“It’s quickly ready to start cooking your lasagna.”
“So what?”
“Your food is on the table sooner.”
“So what?”
“Life is less stressful. There’s less hanging around the kitchen waiting for the oven to get ready. And you don’t have to worry about forgetting to preheat your oven.”
See this image example for the Ipod. Instead of listing the feature of storage capacity, describe why this helps a potential customer.
How to identify benefits
Another useful article shows if you think about a feature as the facts and figures of what you offer, a benefit is a combination of:
The effect it has on your customer/donor/volunteer
How they feel because of this
A very simple 3-step approach to identifying the benefits is:
What does the product/program have or do?
What effect does this have on my customer’s/donor’s/volunteer’s life?
Does this cause a positive emotion or eliminate a negative emotion (or both)?
Examples of Benefits vs Features for Nonprofits
The “So what?” trick we discussed earlier works in any industry, including nonprofits.
“Our nonprofit has a lobbying initiative to expand internet access”
“So what?”
“So we can pass good laws and defeat bad laws”
“So what?”
“So that 10 million people statewide can improve their lives and careers by having guaranteed internet access.”
You can ask the “So what” question until you get to a great benefit.
“Our nonprofit has a community center” becomes “We provide free access to the internet so you can access information, apply for jobs, and unlock opportunities.”
How to find donor pain points
To write more compelling copy and shift toward benefits-focused language, we need to understand the pain points of the people we are talking to. Many nonprofits will say that their target audience is everyone, but this isn’t really true. Businesses and nonprofits should narrow their audience to the people likely to care and then act. You can do this by creating a donor avatar.
This can be done easily in under an hour. Some organizations spend much more time on this and conduct member research through surveys. This isn’t needed for most organizations.
A member/donor avatar or a volunteer avatar is a make-believe person who represents a composite of a likely person in your audience. “Wanda the Worried Mom, who shops at Costco, lives in the suburbs of a mid-size midwest city and reads Vogue magazine. Wanda worries about safety and her children facing bullying at school.”
You get the picture.
Advertisers and nonprofits create avatars to focus their communications. You can have multiple avatars you believe you are communicating through your efforts (ads, newsletters, website, E-blasts, media).
A key part of creating the avatar is identifying their pain points - what they are likely struggling with. Once you do that (by largely using your gut and your brain if you don’t have research), you can start drafting your benefits language - the things your organization does to relieve these pain points.
This journey from inaction to action is supported by connecting your programs and activities (features) with your avatar’s needs (pain points) by explaining how your programs benefit them by alleviating those pain points.
“This journey from inaction to action is supported by connecting your programs and activities (features) with your avatar’s needs (pain points) by explaining how your programs benefit them by alleviating those pain points. ”
People are busy. For them to care and then act, you must get to the point about why what you do matters. The best and easiest way to show them why your work matters is to use benefits-focused language.
Conclusion: To grow your organization and engage more people, focus on the benefits you deliver
Most companies and nonprofits are communicating to the public in the form of lists (programs, services, products) instead of communicating benefits.
We all may be too close to our work to think about the “customer journey” and what their goals, hopes, dreams, and emotions are when they find your organization. That’s why it’s helpful to set aside time and create a donor/member avatar that includes the pain points of our potential donors.
Once we understand the struggles and hopes of our possible donors or volunteers, we can target our communications to them to show how our organization provides benefits to them directly and answer the question: “Why should I care or act?”
Using benefits-focused language should help your organization increase donations, registrations, volunteering, and other action-taking. Try it today. If you need help, reach out sean [at] mindthegapconsutling.org.
