5 Secrets For Uncovering Hidden Product Benefits

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes.

It’s a classic tale…

A startup invents a solution to a common problem.

They test their new product on customers.

The customers end up using the product to solve a different problem instead.

In some rare cases, a product will accidentally solve multiple problems at once. And that’s a very good thing.

In this blog, I’m going to teach you a few handy tricks for uncovering hidden benefits (or solutions) from your already-existing products.

Once discovered, these secret benefits will unlock a bunch of valuable marketing opportunities and perhaps even allow you to reach a whole new demographic of buyers.

Contents:

• The 5 secret ways to uncover hidden product benefits

  • Customer reviews and testimonials

  • Competitor research

  • Study the components

  • A simple conversation (or 10)

  • Predict the future

• What to do with new product benefits after you’ve found them

Let’s dive in.

5 Secret Techniques for Uncovering Hidden Product Benefits

So, you’ve got a pretty sweet product, huh?

What if I told you that you could be marketing it completely the wrong way?

Often what a brand thinks customers love about its products is different from what they actually love about them.

That’s why I’ve compiled some of my most effective methods you can use right now to uncover a few extra benefits for your products.

1. Become obsessed with customer reviews

One of the best places to find hidden product benefits is inside reviews written by your past customers.

You might already know that your product is chemical-free, odourless, and made from entirely organic materials.

But are you aware that it’s also “gentle on the skin”, “great for storing in the car”, and “a refreshing change from all those other gross and sticky alternatives”?

Probably not. But your customers are.

Get a pen and paper out and start going through every review, testimonial, and scrap of customer feedback you have available. Take notes on what the customers enjoyed most about your product.

Pay special attention to anything that comes up more than once – these are the golden nuggets of hidden product benefits.

2. Keep your customers close; keep your competitors closer

“The true path to victory is to find your opponent’s weakness and make him suffer for it.”

- Shifu, Kung Fu Panda.

Your product reviews are a great place to start when hunting for hidden benefits.

But why not take it a step further?

Start perusing your competitor’s product reviews as well. In this case, the bad ones.

Rather than researching what people love about their products, you should be searching for what they hate about them. Get that pen and paper back out and jot down any negative features of their products that your products don’t have.

2-, 3-, and 4-star reviews are the best place to look, as these tend to be the most honest reviews.

If the general consensus is that your competitor’s product is “too spiky”, “doesn’t dissolve properly”, or “contains an absurd amount of bat urine” and none of these descriptions fit your product, then you’ve hit the jackpot.

Simply antonym-inize those reviews to unlock the hidden benefits of what you’re selling.

You could describe your product as “smoother than Elvis”, “instantly dissolvable”, and “100% bat-urine free”.

Soon enough, the customers will flock to your product like a horde of pissy bats.

3. Study the genetic makeup of your product

It is often said that to understand a thing, you must first understand its origins.

Okay, maybe it isn’t “often said” per se. Truthfully, I read that line in a book once and it sounded nice. But in this case, it’s true.

By researching the components or materials that were used to create your product, you can often uncover a whole new range of benefits.

For example, if you’re selling a product made of bamboo then there’s a good chance it’s far more sustainable than plastic or regular-wood alternatives.

(Note: I do not support greenwashing… except when it pertains to cleaning broccoli before a yummy stirfry.)

If you’re selling a digital product, consider the accolades of the people who built it. Their five-time World Innovation Awards success may have just become your new product headline.

4. Have a chat with your happiest customers

Much like my first tip, this one is all about getting it straight from the horse’s mouth.

There’s a strong case to be made for why a real-life conversation with your customers is the most valuable marketing move you can make.

Par exemple…

You and one of your loyal customers meet up for a cup of coffee. You ask them about how their life has changed since using your product. They knock you off your seat with a verbal barrage of the ways it has benefitted their life – ways you’d never even considered.

Okay, perhaps it won’t happen quite so dramatically. But this is pretty close to how many of these conversations go down.

You thought your robotic vacuum cleaner would make their house nice and clean. And it did.

But what it also did was free up more time for them to spend with their children or allowed them to simultaneously focus on their passion project whilst giving the house a good clean.

These are the kinds of hidden benefits we often fail to predict when marketing a product. And once you know them, you’ll be surprised at how effective they are at converting new customers.

5. Predict the future (systematically)

I know what you’re thinking.

You’re thinking: He doesn’t know what I’m thinking.

Well, you’re right. Or are you?

The point I’m trying to make is that, in most cases, predicting the future is tricky.

But when it comes to product benefits, we can make some pretty educated assumptions.

If you know that your product will help customers sleep better, you can make an educated assumption about the ripple effects of better sleep.

A simple Google search reveals that better sleep means:

• You get sick less often.

• You’ll stay at a healthy weight.

• Lower risk of heart disease and diabetes.

And much more.

Thus, by making educated assumptions based on the already-known benefits of your product, you can begin to uncover an entirely new range of hidden benefits.

So simple, yet very few companies do this. This means there’s a big advantage to be had when you apply it to your own products.

Right, I’ve given you my five secrets for uncovering hidden product benefits.

Now, let’s talk about how to squeeze some valuable marketing juice (ew) out of them.

How To Use Hidden Product Benefits To Your Advantage

It’s all well and good to have a big ol’ list of new benefits.

But now that you’ve got them written down, where do you put the bloody things?!

I’ll tell you. Warning: the answer may annoy you.

Because the best place to use your newly uncovered product benefits is…

Everywhere.

That’s right, everywhere. I know that this sounds generic and unhelpful, so allow me to explain.

Product benefits are valuable across all communications.

This is the benefit of benefits, so to speak: You can recycle them across all of your marketing channels.

Here are a few places to embed your new product benefits to increase sales:

• Product descriptions

• Ads

• Social media posts

• Landing pages

• Downloadable assets

• Flyers, billboards, and coffee mugs

• Product packaging

The list goes on.

If you’re unsure how to best present your product benefits in a way that will increase sales, I can help.

Shoot me a message using this link and we can discuss all the ways you can increase conversions using professional copywriting techniques.

So, now that you have all you need to unlock the hidden benefits of your products it’s time to get out there and start grafting.