Thinking up great benefit statements has always been the most challenging part of copywriting for the web. And benefit statements are critical to selling your readers to try your products, services, and ideas, second only to the headline.
In comparison, the other parts of copywriting that people might find challenging, such as stories, headlines, and great price offers were easy. But creating a benefits list drove me crazy; that is until I learned how to come up with one or more benefits every minute.
Any basic sales course will tell you that features don’t sell a product or service, benefits do. Understanding that, I wanted to understand what exactly benefits really are. They are just things that help you take (or not take action), right? For example, you “lose” weight or “make” money. 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. On your computer or desk, spread out the list so you can see the whole thing.
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.”
Then, my descriptive sentence might be that my service helps “accelerate” the time it takes to learn to read Spanish.
4. Write benefits until you can’t think of any more, and don’t think of quitting early! You can cut out those that don’t have as much impact later. You don’t need to stop to think if you are writing duplicate phrases down either, now is not the time. Just keep an open mind and write down any benefit statements that come to mind about your product or service.
5. Now you organize your benefit list in order of priority from most important benefit to last.
This process has worked for me to write great benefits statements, as well as when coming up with article ideas for my blog, 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. Usually, 20 benefits is more than enough to create great sales copy.
Marty Dickinson is the founder of HereNextYear, Inc., a full service Internet marketing company in business for more than 15 years. His passion is Internet marketing solutions for entrepreneurs, speakers and authors. Visit to see what HereNextYear has to offer and to find out about their innovative new website packages fully integrated for ease with social networking and other Internet marketing strategies.

