Your Product Features… My New Sun Hat…

So any marketer worth their salt will tell you the importance of listing the features and benefits of your board game.

Now benefits is about 10x more important, but that is a post for a different time; this post is about FEATURES.

Features are the things that make the game what it is; if you added up all the features of a product you would get an accurate and complete description of the game.

And you might be thinking: “Ok, so what features about my tabletop game should I list?”

Good question, and let me answer that with a story about my beloved new sunhat…

For my recent birthday, I really, really wanted wide brimmed hat for sunny days.

And honestly? I have no idea why.

I mean, I do a lot of my copywriting writing sitting on a lawn chair in my yard…

And will be doing a lot of yardwork over the summer and fall…

But I have plenty of baseball caps, and I never eagerly wanted a sunhat in the past.

But for whatever reason I was dead set on getting a good one.

Which meant one thing: RESEARCH.

I scoured google for big hats, widdling down details one by one:

• I don’t like cowboy hats, so I avoided those…

• It was for hot weather, so leather material was out…

• It wasn’t for backpacking or travel (just the house) so it could be “fragile”…

• I despise bucket hats with every fiber of my being, so it couldn’t be cotton/synthetic…

All those led me to woven sun hats.

Once I knew the type/style, I thought my search was mostly over…

But in fact I just turned the page in another chapter in my search.

Because with woven sun hats came a whole slew of questions I had to answer:

• What color is the hat?

• What color is the tassel?

• Is the brim flat, or does it arc down?

• How large of a brim?

• Is there a band?

• Does the band go all the way around?

• What is the weaving material?

• What culture does the style come from?

• What is the crown shape?

• Is there a crease or a dent in a crown?

• If so, what style…

• And how big?

• What price?

• What company makes it, and what do they stand for?

Ok… TIMEOUT.

Before I continue… take a look at those questions again…

Every single wide brimmed hat in existence has an answer to those questions.

Why?

Because those questions are all about features.

Every hat is some combination of those features; different answer to those questions makes a unique hat.

And that is the key word… UNIQUE.

Which is why you care about listing the features of your tabletop gaming product(s):

THEY MAKE YOUR GAME DISTINCT.

I don’t need to tell you that the market is competitive…

But it is always good to remind people that it is SO competitve that you not only need quality products…

You need UNIQUE products.

You need to be able to answer the questions:

• “What makes yours so special?”

• “Why should I buy from you and not the other guy?”

• “Why is no one else like you?”

The best features should answer those questions.

Now when shopping for a hat, all tof those details are obvious with a picture.

But with a tabletop game???

Not so obvious.

You need to clearly communicate features to customers.

Because the right features can make all the difference in their decision to purchase.

Case and point… and to finish the story… the hat I went with (which I am wearing as I type) was this:

Why?

Because of the crown:

All the hats I was seriously considering were $100 and above. All were woven with vents to keep my head cool. And all had a leather string and a 3+ inch brim.

But ONLY this one had teardrop crown with a light color

And in my eyes, that made the hat more versatile; I could wear it on a walk, out to the farmers market, or just sitting at home.

And so “Imogene and Willie” got my business!