Got 20 Minutes? Create 20 Killer Benefits Statements Copywriting For The Web
My most challenging part of copywriting to sell something online has always been the task of writing benefit statements. But, other than a good headline, to sell visitors to your service, product and ideas you need great benefit statements.
Coming up with headlines, stories, price offers and all the fancy Buy Now! buttons you’d need to fill a sales page was easy for me in comparison. What drove me nuts was coming up with a benefits list; that is until I discovered how to develop more than one benefit a 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? Here’s the process:
1. Alphabetize a long list of action verbs.
2. On your computer or desk, spread out the list so you can see the whole thing
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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.
As an example, “Accelerate” is the first verb on my list.
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. Keep writing benefits as long as you are able and don’t quit! You will be able to pare down your list to only those that give the best punch later. Don’t worry about duplicates right now either. Just let your brain consider your product and freely create the benefits as they come to you.
5. Prioritize your list with the most important benefit statements first and the least important 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.