The feature of demonstrating the benefit!

Features and Benefits
Commonly accepted marketing wisdom suggests that customers like benefits. They don’t give a damn about features. A classic Marketing 101 exercise suggests that you take a piece of paper, and on the left side, write down a list of your product or service’s features. On the right side, list the corresponding benefit(s).

Heaters Feature: It comes with a timer.

Benefit: Your house will be warm when you get home from work.

Lipstick Feature: Fancy-pants patent-pending co-enzyme light-diffusing blah blah blah.

Benefit: Your lips will be glossier.

Trousers Feature: Lycra panels at the waist

Benefit: You will look 10 pounds slimmer.

It’s a little harder to delineate when you’re selling a service.

Features and benefits tend to look alike. Here are a few:

Phone service

Feature: Call forwarding

Benefit: You’ll never miss another important call.

Internet service

Feature: 7 megabyte per second download speed

Benefit: All those mp3s you’re stealing come much faster.

Web design

Feature: Knowledge of PHP, AJAX, JavaScript, etc.

Benefit: You get a pretty website.
What if you can’t figure out if something is a feature or a benefit?

If you don’t know, drill down. Ask why whatever it is you’re thinking about is important to your customer. When you arrive at an answer that even a three-year-old could understand, you’ve found your benefit.

For example, let’s say you run a freelance writing business. You have a network of other writers to whom you can subcontract. Is your network a benefit or a feature?
You: I have a team of freelancers available to me.

Customer: Why do I care?

You: Because you can have your stuff done 5 times faster.