How to turn product attributes to benefits

From Product Attributes to Benefits

Identifying your products' attributes is critical to your product promotion and sales. But product attributes would be nothing without the benefits your customers extract from them. By converting your attributes into benefits, your product messages will resonate more deeply with your customers.

So where do you begin?

Determining the benefits of your product attributes

Determining the benefits of your product attributes is a quick lesson in marketing theory. First, you need to get feedback from your customers about your products. This will give you a better idea of how your products are being used in the lives of your customers.

There are several methods to collect this feedback:

• Social listening

When you monitor social media you can get a better understanding of how the language your target audience uses as well as how they respond to your marketing efforts.

• Market research

Market research helps you gather information about who your target audiences are using both qualitative data (focus groups, interviews, ethnography) and quantitative data (surveys, secondary data).

• Polls

Instagram polls, for instance, will enable user-generated information about the topics you wish to know more about.

• Analyzing on-site activity

Getting an idea of how your customers behave whilst browsing your site will help you understand the why behind the buy. Read here how to collect behavioral data and turn it into psychographic data.

• Reviews

Product reviews will help you hear from your customers exactly what about your products they like and dislike.

Ultimately, you should be able to derive the benefits of your products' key attributes. For example, see how these attributes can be transformed into benefits:

Attribute	Benefit
Recyclable	I am not contributing to pollution and waste.
Waterproof	I will stay dry when it’s raining.
Slimfit	This item will accentuate my curves.

When do I use each?

Once you understand what drives your target audience, you’ll be able to derive the benefits from your products.

For example, let’s say you’re targeting a customer segment of eco-conscious shoppers. Your product attributes can be things like “recycled material”, “no plastic”, or “green supply chain”.

The benefits of these attributes will be inferred by your customers. But, in order to explicitly suggest those benefits, you’ll use something like a campaign that highlights the eco-conscious value of that product. The attributes listed above, for example, represent a segment of sustainable, zero waste, or environmentally friendly shoppers.

However, not all product attributes are so straightforward. Say you have the attribute “leather”. In order to see which customers are specifically looking for “leather” in their products, you need to track their behavior online and talk to them offline.

After gathering this data, maybe you’ll find that Brazilian customers like “leather” because it’s the country that sells it the most, is in high demand, and is a mainstream fashion trend.

So finding the benefits from your product attributes works in two ways:

1. Creating more detailed campaigns from your high-performing attributes showing product benefits.

2. Talking to your customers/analyzing their behavior to understand which attributes appeal as benefits to them.