It’s important that you realise which Benefits and Features matter most to your customers.

In the last post on writing photo captions we touched on incorporating a feature and benefit of your product and service in your photo captions.

But what’s the difference between a feature and a benefit?

Knowing the difference between a feature and a benefit is Marketing 101, but I’ve many small business owners struggle to differentiate between features and benefits when it comes to their own business. So if you’re not clear what the difference is, you’re not alone… and by the end of this article you should have a better idea of how this works for your own business.

Once you’ve got that sussed, it’ll help you with many aspects of your marketing – not just photo captions!

Features

Features are fact-based, but by themselves, they’re pretty boring. Here are some examples of features:

• Car: does 50 miles per gallon.
• Dog food: contains 20% vegetables.
• Fountain pen: has a flexible tip.
• Accountant: provides clients with monthly reporting.
• Window cleaning service: uses chemical-free products.

Viewed in isolation, most of these statements promote a “so what” response… so what if a dog food contains 20% vegetables? So what if a pen has a flexible tip? Features by themselves don’t make for exciting, compelling or memorable marketing. You need to put the feature into some kind of context.

Benefits put features into context

And that’s where the benefits come in: they put the feature into context, usually by drawing on some kind of emotion. For example:

• Car: Because it does 50 miles per gallon, you can spend your money on more fun stuff.
• Dog food: nutritionally-balanced to keep your pet fit and healthy for longer.
• Fountain pen: the flexible tip enhances your hand writing.
• Accountant: monthly reports come with easy-to-understand commentary so you know if your business is healthy – or in the danger zone.
• Window cleaning service: not only will your windows be clean, but the products we use are allergy-free for your family and pets.

Do you notice something about these emotions?

Sometimes the benefit draws on happy emotions (doing fun stuff; having a fit and healthy dog), but other times the benefit draws into a more negative emotion. For example, this fountain pen might appeal to those who are ashamed of their handwriting. And the accountant’s service taps into the fear that entrepreneurs may have of business failure. And so on.

So should you tap into a positive or a negative emotion? There’s no hard and fast rule here, it depends on your product or service, and it depends on your industry. But most if all, it depends on your target customer’s needs and desires. (And to do that, you need to really get to know what motivates your customers. How? Asking them is the only sure-fire way to find out.)

Customers have a mix of emotions going on inside them

Often people will have a mixture of emotional drivers, but at the time of purchase one is often stronger than the others, which is why they’re taking the plunge to buy from you.

How does this tie into marketing – and into photo caption writing?

To market your product or service successfully, you need to hook into those emotionally-based buying decisions. And to do that, you need to recognise that your product or service has two levels:

1. The basic need, which is where the logical stuff comes into it.
2. The augmented need, which is where your heart and emotions start getting involved.

In short: there’s a difference between the things we need, and the things we want. We may not need that new dress we’ve just splurged on, but we want to feel good about ourselves.

Let’s just look at these emotionally-based augmented needs in a little more details, so you can understand just how far you can go with stating the benefits of your product or service.

The classic example of the drill manufacturer…

Have you heard the saying that people don’t want to buy a drill, they want a hole?

Actually, that’s wrong. They don’t want the hole: they want to hang a painting, or put up some shelves. And there are emotions around that seemingly straightforward desire to have a hole. The customer might be feeling:

• One-upmanship: they want to show off their new art to friends and family.
• Nesting: they want to create a cosy, comfortable home.
• Frustration: they’re fed up with the house looking a mess, and they doing something about it by putting up shelves. (Or maybe they’re frustrated with the lady of the house, who keeps asking for shelves to be installed!)
• Procrastination: they don’t like home maintenance.
• Fear: they don’t like using power tools… but know they have to.

Let’s look at some photo caption examples to give you an idea of what works and what doesn’t work, so you can see how to tie in emotional benefits into the features:

This caption makes me think, “so what”? Just stating a feature does nothing for me. Is a 1.5Ahr battery good or bad? I have no idea!

This is better! Notice how this caption incorporates a feature (the 1.5Ahr battery) as well as a benefit. It makes it clear to the reader that a 1.5Ahr battery is a good thing to have.

Let’s look at a service-based example too: a real estate agent

The basic, logical need that a real estate agent fulfils is that to sell a house.

The augmented needs (emotional drivers) around the desire to engage a real estate agent might include:

• Wealth-driven: wanting to get the highest possible price for your house.
• Fear: some people hate negotiating and want someone to do that for them.
• Convenience and time-saving: having someone else take care of viewings.

Let’s look at a poor example of a photo caption, so you can see what to avoid writing:

This caption attempts to state a benefit: but without a feature to back it up, it’s wishy-washy and provokes a “so what” response. Essentially it’s just a bland statement.

A better example is as follows:

Again, the good example includes a feature as well as a benefit. By including a specific statistic, the statement comes across as being more credible. It packs punch. (You can read more tips on using numbers in your copy here.)

You need to include the logic as well as the emotion

Just because buying decision are 80% emotionally-based, it doesn’t mean that you can forget about the 20% logical (feature-based) element. Consumers will need some logic when justifying the purchase either in their own minds, or to their spouse or friends.

Example: justifying a purchase in your own mind

“I can justify buying the top-of-the-range drill with the extra powerful battery, because I can get those chores done more quickly.”

Example: justifying a purchase to others

“Yeah, I know the car looks quite flashy, but it actually does 50 miles per gallon, so it’ll pay for itself in no time.”

…or the more common line of: “I needed to buy this dress, honey. It’s so versatile I can wear it for work and your business dinner. And it was 50% off in the sale, you know!”

In short: your marketing need to address the features AND the benefits of your product or service. One without the other will not work!

Summary

• Features by themselves are boring and provoke a “so what” response.
• Benefits by themselves can be wishy-washy and may also provoke a “so what” response.
• Benefits put features into context.
• Benefits should draw on emotions: either positive or negative.
• You need to draw on the strongest emotion that your customer is likely to be feeling when purchasing your product or service.
• It’s important to still state the feature in your marketing, because consumers will need this to justify their purchase (in their own minds, or to other people).
• Combining a feature and benefit in photo captions gives it maximum impact.

This eBook is packed with tips to make your marketing materials more effective!

Are you looking for more ways to make your marketing photography more effective?

Discover more tips on making your marketing photography more persuasive in my eBook ‘How to Choose and Use Eye-Catching Photographs for your Marketing’.

… And in this article, you’ll discover the techniques to write great photo captions for your marketing.

Have you ever played a memory game with a group of friends?

You know, the kind where everyone adds an item to the list, and you have to remember what everyone else has said, as well as adding your own item to the list. It gets quite hard, very quickly!

Imagine if you only had to remember one item… it would be a very dull game, for sure, because it’s too easy. Anyone can remember just one item.

With photo captions, it’s good that people are able to remember one item

When you’re writing photo captions, you want people to remember just one thing. Yes, just one thing.

You don’t want readers to try and remember more than one thing, or they’ll get confused and forget. (Remember, you’re trying to get your message across, not play memory games!)

And there’s more to writing a good image caption than simply stating what’s in the photograph. While you do need to put the photo into context, just saying what’s in the photo will generally leave readers confused and thinking, “so what?”

Here’s an example of a photo caption that creates a “so what” response:

Simply stating what’s in the photograph is a missed opportunity: you can do better than that!

To write a better caption, you need to incorporate a benefit

To write a more powerful photo caption, you need to incorporate a benefit of your product or service.

So for the dog food photo caption example, what benefits do you think the premium quality dog food may have?

Begin by brainstorming the different benefits of the dog food. (And we’re talking benefits here, not features… we’ll look at the difference between features and benefits in the next blog article.)

The benefits of the premium dog food might be:

• Nutritionally-balanced for maximum energy
• Gives the dog healthy skin and coat
• Quality ingredients promote longevity
• Keeps teeth clean and freshens breath
• Supports joint health
• No flatulence guarantee

… you get the idea!

Now you need to pick one benefit

Yes, pick just one benefit – and it needs to be the one thing that is most likely to motivate customers to buy. This benefit needs to address the biggest worry or concern your target market might have.

While things like glossy fur and clean teeth are nice things for a dog to have, the biggest concern a dog owner will usually have is longevity. Dog owners get very attached to their pooch, yet the dog may live for just 10 to 15 years… not nearly long enough, for something you love so much! So a product that (realistically) promises a long and healthy life is something that’ll tug at the heartstrings of dog owners, motivating them to buy your product rather than your competitors’ offerings.

But before you write the caption, there’s one more thing to address. And that is, to make the caption believable.

Making the caption believable

Notice how I’ve alluded to the fact that a caption must be believable? You can’t just go making wild promises without backing them up. For example, the following caption is totally unbelievable:

This caption would most likely be met with a skeptical, “yeah, right”, and you need to avoid that. You need to make your caption believable.

How to make your caption believable

To make the caption believable, you need to tie in the feature that corresponds with the benefit you’ve chosen.

In the dog food example, it would be the nutritional aspects of the food that help to justify that claim.

But again, pick just one feature, not a bunch of features, or it’ll get confusing.

With your one benefit and corresponding feature selected, you can now write your photo caption. Example:

Ta-da! There’s your ideal photo caption.

Of course, you could tweak the caption further, such as:

• Your best friend can enjoy a long and healthy life, thanks to this nutritionally-balanced dog food. Or:
• Your dog will get all the nutrients he needs in this premium dog food, so he can enjoy a long and healthy life. Or:
• Because this premium dog food is nutritionally-balanced, your dog can enjoy a long and healthy life.

There are a number of ways in which the message in the caption can be phrased, there’s no one single right answer. But notice how all these caption ideas incorporate just one benefit, and the one corresponding feature.

Sidenote: A photo that would be more appealing than one of dog food would be a picture of either (a) a cute, healthy-looking dog enjoying eating the dog food, or (b) a cute, healthy-looking dog running through a flowery meadow – the perfect picture of good health.

But the reality is that we don’t always have the perfect photo to work with, and when you’re a small business owner, it’s often about making the most of what you’ve got. So for now, focus on writing great captions for the photos you’ve already got… but do make it part of your plan to obtain better photos if you need to.

How to give your caption the breath test

Before you finalise your choice of caption, give it a quick breath test.

What’s the breath test? This is about making sure you can say your caption in one breath. If you can’t say it in one breath, it’s also too long for people to remember it. (After all, this is meant to be an easy memory game for your reader, not a complex memory test!)

Here’s an example of a caption that’s too long:

Phew, that’s far too long and cluttered! Do not use captions this long: you’ll be out of breath, and your readers will be confused.

But what about writing captions for a service?

The example so far has been product-related, i.e. to dog food. But what if you’re selling a service? Exactly the same rules apply. Let’s look at a quick example to see photo captions for a service in action.

The service we’ll look at is also canine related: we’ll use a dog walking service as an example. This caption is too short and gives us the “so what” factor: Dog walking service.

Using a caption that just talks about a feature gives a “so what” reaction too: Our dog walkers have been police checked.

Instead we need to talk about a benefit; specifically, one which addresses the prospect’s primary concern. And if you were looking at a dog walking service, your primary concern may be that the dog walker treats your pet responsibly and with good care. In short, you want them to take the same good care of your dog as you do. Someone that’ll be kind to them and keep them safe.

So a good caption might be: You can be sure that your dog’s getting good care when you’re at work.

And to make the caption even more believable, you could add in a feature to justify the benefit, e.g.: You can be sure that your dog’s getting good care from our police checked dog walkers.

(Sometimes this adding of a feature is necessary, other times it isn’t… it depends on how believable your benefit is by itself.)

And let’s look at an example that’s far too long and confusing, and fails the breath test (so you know what not to do): Our dog walking service is convenient if you work long hours, plus our dog walkers are police checked and have pet first aid skills for your peace of mind.

To help you visualise the ideal caption for the dog walking service example, here’s a visual:

With this particular photo, it would be even better to put the text next to the image, so that the dog’s looking at the words. This would create a nice, compelling Non-Mona Lisa effect. (Not sure what the ‘Non-Mona Lisa effect’ is? Then you need to grab the Free eGuide, ‘How to Choose Eye-Catching Photographs for your Marketing’, which explains this.)

Summary checklist for caption writing

A good caption includes the following elements:

• The caption makes it obvious what’s in the picture, or puts the picture into context.
• It tells the reader something extra in addition to the obvious, i.e. you avoid the “so what” syndrome.
• You state just one benefit: ideally this benefit will be your prospect’s biggest motivator.
• You use one feature to back up the benefit (if it’s needed).
• The caption passes the breath test; you can easily say it in one breath.

If you work through this process when you’re writing captions for your own photos, you’ll be able to create something compelling that’s also easy for readers to remember… no memory games required!

This eBook is packed with tips to make your marketing materials more effective!

PS. Imagine how dull this article would be without the graphics!

That’s why photos and captions are so important: they help to lock in the learning.

If you want your clients to remember what you’re telling them, be sure you’re using all the tips in my eBook, ‘How to Choose and Use Eye-Catching Photographs for your Marketing’.

The eBook has a whole chapter on writing memorable photo captions, plus other little-known tips on making your marketing materials more effective. For example:

• Where you can find quality photographs – on any budget.
• The importance of where the model is looking in a photograph.
• How to choose a photo that won’t date too quickly.
• Why photographs with white backgrounds are ultra versatile
• How to combine words with images (captions are just one of the techniques you can use).
• How you can create drama with photographs through size, positioning, angles and borders.

See details of this eBook and buy online →

Photo captions are twice as likely to be read as the body copy… so you can double your readership with just one sentence!

A dentist I know uses the catchline ‘only floss the teeth you want to keep’. Yes, dental humour is quite, um, unique, but I guess the dentist was fed up with his clients complaining that flossing is a tedious chore that they forget to do.

Flossing is one of those chores that we know we should do, but it’s just not very appealing.

These non-appealing chores aren’t limited to dentistry; they exist in business life too.

A complaint that I often hear from my clients is that it’s tedious to write captions for photos in marketing materials… but the same kind of logic applies as the dentist uses:

“Only write captions for the photographs you want readers to remember”

Eh? What have photo captions got to do with memory? A lot, actually.

It’s been proven that readers are twice as likely to read a photo caption as they are the body copy of your marketing piece.

What’s more, the combination of photo plus caption gives your marketing piece really strong visual branding. The photo and caption combo help to lock your message into the reader’s brain. It captures people’s imagination far more than words alone do.

Photograph + Caption = Visual Branding Extraordinaire!

This visual branding is something I’ve been testing myself

The eagle-eyed readers amongst you will have spotted that not every article on my blog has an image (gasp!). It’s a work-in-progress: I’m gradually adding images (usually cartoons) for each article.

Naturally, I want to promote the articles that I’ve written. (Even the ones without images.) So I’ve got a neat gadget on my website that automatically posts links to my blog articles on Twitter every couple of days. And I’ve noticed that it’s the blog posts with images that are getting more “re-tweets”, more mentions, and more web traffic.

A coincidence? No, I don’t think so. The articles without cartoons are just as well-written and insightful as those without cartoons… but the visual imagery of the cartoons creates a far stronger visual impression than words alone. And yes, the cartoons have captions.

But I don’t have time to write captions…

You don’t have time to write one little sentence? Really? That’s all that a photo caption is: one sentence! And remember, this little sentence is twice as likely to get read as the whole page of blurb you’ve just written. So I strongly suggest you take the time to write that one measly sentence!

But photo captions look ugly; they ruin the design…

Admittedly, sometimes photo captions don’t look so hot. If that’s the case, you need to have a wee word with your graphic designer. Or if you’re DIYing, get a graphic designer to help you, or else look at materials that do make good use of captions, to get you inspired.

Remember, your marketing piece is there to sell, not just to look pretty. Insist that captions are used; it will be worth it!

Like the idea of captions but don’t know how to write them?

Stuck on how to write photo captions? That’s something we’ll look at in the next blog post. We’ll look at what should be included in a photo caption, so that you can write photo captions with confidence.

After that, you’ll be able to confidently write photograph captions for every photograph you want your visitors to remember. So be sure to keep an eye out for the next installment of this blog! (Or get Marketing Tips like this emailed to you directly… here’s where you can add yourself to the list.)

Summary:

• Photo captions are twice as likely to get read as the body copy of your marketing materials.
• Photograph + Caption = Visual Branding Extraordinaire.
• The visual branding helps to lock in the message you’re communicating.

This eBook is packed with tips to make your marketing materials more effective!

Want more tips on how to use photographs to help increase sales?

Then check out my eBook, ‘How to Choose and Use Eye-Catching Photographs for your Marketing’.

The eBook has a whole chapter on writing memorable photo captions, plus other little-known tips on making your marketing materials more effective.