Thinking up great benefit statements has always been the most challenging part of copywriting for the web. And, second to the headline, the benefits are what sell people on your product, service, idea or even political opinion.
All of the other parts of copywriting such as good headlines, price offers and stories were much easier for me than finding good benefit statements. The benefits list always drove me crazy; until I discovered the secret to creating one benefit or more per minute.
You may recall from Sales 101 that benefits are what sells your product or service, not features. Knowing the truth to that, I started to take a closer look at what benefits really are. I discovered they are really just action items in disguise, agreed? You “save” money or “stop” wasting time, for example. So, what do you think about starting out each benefit statement with a verb that takes action? The process goes like this:
1. Alphabetize a long list of action verbs.
2. Put the list on your desk or computer screen where you can see the entire list
.
3. Begin with the first verb in your list that begins with the letter A and read the verb out loud and make a sentence out of it that describes one benefit of your product.
For example, the first word in my list of verbs is “Accelerate”.
So, I might say to myself that my product helps people to “Accelerate your learning speed by getting true hands-on training with every command”.
4. Write benefits until you can’t think of any more, and don’t think of quitting early! You’ll weed out the benefits later that don’t have as much punch as you thought. You don’t need to stop to think if you are writing duplicate phrases down either, now is not the time. Just open your mind to think about your product or service and brainstorm benefit ideas as they come.
5. Now you organize your benefit list in order of priority from most important benefit to last.
I’ve used this process not only for creating benefits lists, but also for writing articles, such as “35 Reasons Why a Blog is Better than a Traditional Web Site for Your Business,” or “50 Ways to Kill a Perfectly Good Seminar”.
Use my list of verbs or create your own and start creating your killer benefit statements in just 20 minutes. Most of the time, you won’t need more than a great list of 20 benefits.
Marty Dickinson is an entrepreneur and the founder of HereNextYear, Inc., a full service Internet marketing company in business for 15 years. He specializes in Internet marketing solutions for the small business owner, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to learn more about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.