@Karri: Welcome, and thanks for the excellent comment. You’re quite right, I don’t mean for people to use these verbatim! And I love your elaboration of the promotion example.

You’re also absolutely right that making money can be an emotional benefit as well as a “bottom line” benefit. I want to get away from the default assumption that it’s the primary driver of every business decision, but yes, it should definitely be on the list!

I wanted to remind readers about the importance of specificity in selling a benefit in case they think the above items should just be injected straight into a page of copy without further detail.

i.e. To drive home the benefit in purchasing a product or service you have to provide very specific images, feelings, and even tastes, smells and sounds. For example, “get a promotion” might be expounded on to read “Walk into your boss’s office tomorrow. Walk out making 15% more than you do today.”

I know this list was intended as more of an idea generator than to provide literal copywriting examples, but wanted to throw this into the conversation.

Oh, and people are pretty emotional about money too, so “Make more money” definitely needs to be on that list! Of course, I’d be more specific than that in my actual copy …)

Very useful post!
Cheers.