The FAB analysis formula is widely utilised in copywriting circles for obvious reasons. Focusing on the product and your target market enables you to educate both your audience and yourself. Product knowledge and user research are essential to this formula’s maximum impact. Correctly applied, the Features-Advantages-Benefits analysis for copywriters is FAB, and not only in name alone.
Features
Scotty Schindler explains a feature as follows: “A feature is can (sic) be defined as a distinctive characteristic of a good or service that sets it apart, a means of providing its advantages and the benefits to customers.”
In simpler terms, the features of a product are defined by its physical and usability specs. Focusing accurately on features informs and educates audience, minimising a need for questions. Comprehensive knowledge of your product’s features enables greater opportunity to ‘sell’ it as you are able to detail the advantages you discover more easily.
Advantages
“An advantage is what that feature does, and how it helps. These are factual and descriptive but do not yet make a connection as to how it will make users’ life better.” – airfocus.com
Your intrinsic knowledge of your product’s features, gained through personal testing and utilisation, simplifies the mapping out of its advantages in copy. Factual advantages, without emotional copy, provides your audience with a foundation to base considerations on, and boosts your chances of future conversions. Not everybody is going to buy your product, but the impressions gained of your business are lasting. Providing them with the platform to enhance their knowledge of your product accurately means they are more likely to return, either to reconsider your product’s merits or to seek out future products.
Benefits
changefactory.com.au hits the nail on the head: “Develop benefits from your knowledge of the target market.”
It has already been established that you require a first-rate knowledge of your product in order to market it effectively. You have, at this stage, already researched the features of your product and mapped out its advantages through personal testing. You have a clear idea of what benefits it gives you but that’s actually not too important – the benefits it will give your audience is everything. Research your target market thoroughly and know them on an almost-intimate level as this will show you exactly how your product will benefit them. Providing an accurate list of your product’s features and describing its advantages factually are important, but detailing how it benefits your audience is the most important FAB process. Spend time researching your audience’s demographics – conduct interviews and polls, and network. Ultimately, this effort will garner you conversions as the benefits you list will pertain to your audience.
Conclusion
The Features-Advantages-Benefits Analysis for copywriters is a proven formula for generating sales. “Analysis” appears for a reason: the success of this formula relies on investigation and research, both on the part of developers and marketing staff, to truly succeed. If this effort is put in, the FAB system truly is FAB.
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