I feel like marketers are so busy arguing over leading with features vs. benefits vs. value vs. pains vs. verbs vs. Klingon that I’m starting to doubt everyone even knows the difference.

No shade — it’s not that straightforward. In fact, I’ve been mulling over this since my product days.

There, knowing those differences matters most, especially feature vs. capability.

Here’s how it helped me to think about it:

• Feature - how you do the thing. The key here is to remember there are many ways to achieve the same thing.

  • You can manage your CRM in a spreadsheet and in hubspot (extreme example I know, but I’m trying to make a point here).

  • You can get desktop notifications or a weekly email recap.

• Capability - what the thing lets you do.

• Benefit - why bother; what you get out of doing (or having) the thing.

When you think about your product roadmap, start at the benefit (or the pain) and work your way down to prioritize features.

Inside the product you narrow in on the capability and then consider different approaches (=features).

On your content (i.e., messaging), you usually want to focus on just one of these.

But which one depends on the audience, goal, and timing (brand/awareness, pre-sale, onboarding, post sale).

All these things are interconnected, but you have to know the difference to know which lever to pull.

And for our product buddies — what to invest in.