If you're shopping for bed sheets, 300 threads per inch may not mean a whole lot to you. Until you discover how much that density adds to the comfort, warmth, and longevity of the linen.

Similarly, when you subscribe to a Saturday morning newspaper, you're not just buying the five pounds of paper inked with news stories. You're buying the enjoyment of reading that information, perhaps while sipping a morning coffee on the back deck. You may also be buying the convenience of having that paper delivered to your home so you don't have to get dressed and march over to the corner store to get it.

When you decide to purchase a product, it's often the perceived benefits that motivated you much more than the product features.

When bringing the benefits to life, be sure you're actually describing a benefit, not a feature. Features describe the product — how it's made, how it works, what it does, how well it does it. Benefits describe the effect those features will have on you, the customer.

The benefits of a product might be that it saves you time, makes you money, solves a problem, advances your career, improves your relationships, entertains you, or makes you healthier.

If a product is one that is sold mainly to businesses, accounting software for example, the benefits might be improved cash flow, greater productivity, less risk of tax penalties, higher employee moral, a competitive advantage, and lower operating costs.

Writing about features is fairly easy. All you need is the detailed product information. Your real challenge as a copywriter is to bring the benefits derived from the features to life.