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Translating Product Features into Consumer Benefits

By Mike Gordon

In the Products and Services section of your Business Plan/Marketing Plan, you need to describe your products and services. Features are their unique characteristics, traits, or attributes. The goal is to translate those features into meaningful benefits for your customers. Benefits are the unique advantages or values your product/service will offer the buyer.

There is a concise three-step method to this process

First, create a comprehensive list of the product or service’s features.

Then go through each feature listed and describe what the feature does and/or their performance. Why the product and service features work to highlight their unique characteristics. The product or service advantages and functions serve to describe exactly what the features does and performance is. It also answers the question, “what are the advantages of these tasks and functions? “

Finally, to complete the translation to customer benefits, address the specific problem-solving outcomes of the listed advantages/performances. They provide the customer with outcomes like: so they will receive more; allowing them greater; enabling them to spend less money or less time and so on.

This process takes a little time and thought, but it will help you describe customer benefits in the product and services section of the business plan. And it will also help sell your products!

Let’s look at Feature to Benefit Chart:

Example of a features to benefits translation List for a Hearing Aide: