How to Stop Writing Boring Product Descriptions

How to Write a Product Description that’s Customer Focused

Hey everybody Gisèle Grenier, in this video tutorial, you’re going to  learn how to write a product description. Now, the examples that I’m going to be using are based on a physical product, but you can easily adapt this to a digital product as well. So we’ll go down to the screen. I have a presentation  here.

So the first question that you want to ask yourself is what is the product and who it’s for.   Pretty simple. For the product, it’s going to be a planner. And for who it’s for, it’s going to be a mom.

That homeschools her children and the way that we’re going to write this is going to be customer focused because you need to picture your ideal customer at all times. She’s always in front of you when you’re doing anything and everything. So make sure you keep that in mind. Anytime you’re writing, doing social writing and email, because if you’re connecting with your ideal customer, then your message is going to be very easily understood.

The next question is what’s the name of your product? That’s a no-brainer, keep it simple. It’s a homeschooling planner.  You can come up with a creative name  at the end, but  right now what it is, it’s a homeschooling planner. Then the next question, what type of product is it? Although I’m going to be focusing the copy on a physical planner, this could be a digital and physical planner, and you’ll see where this comes into play.

in a few minutes. And the next question, who would be interested in this product? That one’s an easy one. Okay. Because we’ve already identified who our ideal customer is, but we want to get more specific. So what I’ve written is a mom of two young children living in Ontario.

She’s homeschooling her children instead of doing in-person and online learning during the pandemic. Now, this is why it’s really important to know who your ideal customer is.  Down to the specifics, because the planner that I’m making is specifically created for the Ontario education system.

If your product is a planner, it is created for the state that you’re in. If you’re in the United States, then that’s why you need to know who your ideal customer is. You would not believe how many times when I talk to a client or a potential client and say, okay, who is your ideal customer? Who do you want to sell to? Anyone. Where do they live?

It doesn’t matter. It does matter.  Specifically for this, it does matter  because if you’re creating something that’s based on. Local, like I have a friend who does travel photography out in Germany. Of course his ideal customer is going to be location specific. So that’s why it’s important to know.

You need to really niche down and figure out who your ideal customer is.  I’ve got a few blog posts specifically on that, where you can get that information. All right. So the planner is going to be for a mom of two young children living in Ontario, Canada, she’s homeschooling her children instead of doing in-person and online learning during the pandemic.

Then the next question, what does the product do? And a benefit.  You can see how I’m getting really specific on these questions is more than just features. Features are just the thing, but it’s the benefits. The benefits are how the person’s going to feel using your product. So the homeschooling planner helps moms schedule the homeschooling lessons so she can spend more time teaching and less time running around trying to figure things out.

What it does and the benefits.   And I’m using my daughter has an example for this.  Shandi, homeschools, Ava, and Wolfe, and she does a phenomenal job. So I got a lot of tips from her for this particular post

Then the next question. What makes this product unique? How does it stand out? What makes it different from everything else? So what I wrote is this product is unique as it’s not only available as a digital and physical planner, but it’s customized for the Ontario education homeschooling program. Now this is a fictitious product.

The wording may not be right, but you can see where I’m going with this. So you really want to figure out what makes your product unique and stands out from everybody else. If you make a pencil. What makes this pencil different from everybody else’s? Is it that your hands are more comfortable holding the pencil because of the rubberized comfort grip?

Is it lightweight and balanced? So it doesn’t feel heavy on the top part of your hand versus the bottom part of your hand, is your pencil designed specifically for people with arthritis? What makes it unique? What you don’t want to do is have somebody say I can buy that at Walmart, or I can buy that at the dollar store.

I can buy that in whatever office supply, big box stores in your area, you want to make it really unique. This is where again, this is where people get stumped.  So what are the benefits? When I talk about benefits, it’s the feeling that people get.  Your product does this?

So what, who cares? It’s the benefits and what you can do with the benefits is really flip things around instead of what it does for you , and this would come down  into your other types of copy, like your blog posts and social and all that stuff is the feelings of the before, during and after of using your product, how does a person feel before using your product?

How does a person feel while using your product? And how does a person feel after they’ve used your product?  So what I wrote is, although she’s provided with the curriculum for homeschooling, she’s also running a farm. So she needs to balance work and educating her children. The planner will take her from feeling overwhelmed and not sure if she can pull this off to feeling more confident, just after 15 minutes of using the planner to feeling a sense of relief.

Once she’s completed one section, which simplified the entire planning process.  The way that I’ve written this with a little massaging, you can actually copy and paste this into your actual product description,  you just have to tweak some of the  words a little bit. Then the next question is what are the features?

Now this is easy for people to write. People  have no problem writing features. It’s what the thing does.  So what it is… it’s 365 double-sided pages. Formatted.   It’s a school term, monthly, weekly, and daily planning sections.  Dated and numbered. Digital version is provided as a high quality PDF with choices of colored or black ink.

Printable version is provided as three planners to keep the size manageable and printed on 24 pounds, bright white, recycled paper with vegetable ink.

The cover is coated to protect the planner from coffee spills, because we all know that moms will be doing this while having breakfast or lunch.

So let me go into a little bit here. When talking about the printable being provided as three planners to keep the size manageable, you can further build onto the benefits of that or just organization.The planners can be made for each school term being printed on 24 pounds of bright white.

That way it’s crisp and clean and easy to see. Recycled paper and vegetable ink. If you’re environmentally conscious and then the cover coat. This one I really liked is the cover coated to protect the planner from coffee spills, because we all know that moms will be doing this while having breakfast or lunch.

It could be Mom’s, Dad, a parent, but I’m being very specific on who my ideal customer is. And more likely she’s going to be doing this while having breakfast or lunch. So just putting that coating on there to prevent the coffee spills from staining the book, that just hits home. And then the price.

So the price for this, 99.95, was pretty simple 99.95. But what you would do with the price being 99.95 for a printable version , then you obviously have a price for a download version.  And then any other relevant information, shipping, terms of service, guarantee, customizing what happens if they choose a digital version?

What are the steps? What happens next? Keep them in the loop as to the process. Once they click that add to cart button or just buy now.  Always picture your ideal customer sitting in front of you. At the laptop, on their phone, looking at this process and it visualizes any questions that they may have visualized, any objections they may have.

So what you want to do is in addition to writing the product description, you might want to look at, maybe adding a little section below frequently asked questions to address those things. That happens when I’m on websites too. If I’m looking at buying something and I have questions and it drives me nuts, a lot of things drive me nuts if I don’t know, if something does something, I can’t find a flippen contact link.

Who are these people? I can’t find an about page. What if I don’t like it, what’s their return policy? All these questions. So picture yourself when you’re buying something that really bothers you, picture yourself, buying something when you decide not to buy it, why didn’t you buy it? Use those as jump-off points.

Come up with your own ideas to come up with your frequently asked questions. And once you’ve done that, then all you have to do is just draft on there. You can draft it out on paper, you can draft it out in a workbook. You can draft it out on your website. But just practice  some product descriptions and what to do is hand them off to a couple of people and just say, is this something you might buy?

If you were a blah-blah-blah? So from my example, if you were homeschooling your kids, Would this interest you? Not so much the physical product, but the way that it’s written.  What are some objections that you might have?  So this tutorial, short and sweet, but it was very focused on the actual customer.

You noticed that the features you shoved those at the end?  Features are just the things.   People aren’t  going to buy what the thing does, they’re going to buy what they’re going to get out of it.

It’s all about them. What does it do for them? How does it make them feel? Obviously you want them to feel good. So you want to really focus on taking those features, converting them to benefits that will make them feel good about using your product. All right. So I hope this tutorial helps you write your product descriptions for your physical products or digital product, and what’s going to be coming up.

Next time is going to be how to write up a service description if you’re a coach or if you’re an instructor or  a teacher and  we’re going to be doing that a little bit differently because there isn’t a physical product to purchase, but it’s available as an online purchase. Alrighty. So as usual, if you have any questions, click the contact link at the top of the page and fire me off any questions that you might have.

And I would love to see an example of what you’ve done. So at the same time, you can always forward me your example. And I’d love to take a look at it. Alrighty. So until I see you next time, stay inspired.