How to Write Product Descriptions that Speak to Your Target Audience

Back in the day, you could have a witty salesman standing next to the products in your store. The salesman could have touted the products and cajoled customers into buying them.

It was a fairly simple deal.

But nowadays, online stores are gaining popularity. Instead of showing products on glass shelves, they’re shown in a nice little bordered box on a website instead. And instead of witty salesmen, they are usually accompanied by product descriptions. A properly-written product description can convince visitors to make a purchase, which can further turn them into loyal customers.

But, this type of idealistic outcome is not easy to acquire. You have to make sure that the descriptions you write are properly researched and written. And if you are not sure about how you can do that, read this post till the end.

1. Tip Number Uno: Research Your Audience

If you want to make your product description sell, you need to conduct your research properly. You have to research your audience

and get an idea about who exactly will be reading your product descriptions.

The tone and style you adopt in your description will vary depending on the audience. For example, if you identify your audience to be from the younger segment of society, you will need to write the descriptions in a way that appeals to them.

So, how can you research your audience for this purpose? You can simply conduct surveys with your existing customers by sending them emails or by setting up a survey form on your website.

That way, you will be able to easily get the information you need.

2. Tip Number Dos: Talk About the Benefits

When writing your product descriptions, you have to talk about the things that are understandable and valuable to your customers. There could be some technical detail in your product that could essentially be the reason behind an awesome feature, but the technical detail in itself could be useless to the reader.

For example, telling your customers about a “…G96 processor…” alone can be a bit bland. But if you throw in a benefit as well, it would come out as “…a fast and powerful G96 processor….”

Similarly, if you are talking about a particular piece of furniture, it won’t exactly be fun if you just say, “…This table comes with a powder-coated surface….” But if you say, “…This table can handle rough treatment thanks to the durable powder-coated surface. Powder coating helps retain the paint better and also gives the surface better resistance against corrosion, dent, and scratches…” it would be a lot better since the benefits of the feature are described.

 3. Tip Number Tres: Use the Right Tone

When writing your product description, you have to make sure that you use the right tone. There are basically two types of “filtering” that you have to do when it comes to setting the tone.

1. First off, you need to set a default promotional and advertising tone, regardless of what you’re writing and who you’re writing it for. Since it’s a product description, it needs to have an inherent promotional touch to it.
2. After this first and general tone, you need to specify it to your audience in particular. For example, if you’ve concluded that your audience is made up of adults, you need to keep your tone somewhat formal. On the other hand, if the audience comprises of teenagers and youngsters, you can even get away with a bit of slang.

With the right tone, you will be able to make your description engaging.

If you happen to write some content and it turns out with a tone different than what you wanted, you can always try adjusting it (the tone) afterward. In other words, you could paraphrase the content to alter the one and make it more in line with your requirements.

There are a number of ways in which you can paraphrase your content for this purpose. You can try doing it manually. Manual paraphrasing can be great since it can provide excellent results with little to no contextual errors. However, it can take up a lot of time.

Another way to paraphrase your content to change its tone is to use an online tool called paraphraseonline.io. Paraphrase Online (or plain paraphrasers) can affect different types of changes to the given content and change it in a matter of seconds. There are a number of smart paraphrase tools available online that can even offer multiple modes to users that they can choose from to adjust the tone of the output.

 4. Tip Number Cuanto: Be Specific

You should take care not to add too many unnecessary details to your product description. While it may sound somewhat reasonable and while it may be tempting, adding unrelated material can make your description look boring. Customers will be more likely to abandon the description (and, along with it, their purchase).

If, for example, you’re advertising a laptop, you don’t need to start rhetoric on technology and its impact on our world, etc. You should come straight to the point by describing the specs of the device and its benefits.

Other than being specific in this way, i.e., by coming straight to the point, you also have to take care about using specific words and terms in the description. Your aim should be to eliminate ambiguity and vagueness as much as you can.

For example, if someone wants to describe the quality of being long-lasting in a particular product, they would use different specific words depending on the nature and type of the item. A pair of shoes would be described as “durable,” whereas a battery pack would be described as “economical.”

5. Tip Number Cinco: Find and Eliminate All Errors

If you want your product descriptions to sell, you need to make sure that they contain no errors or mistakes of any kind. Should you, for example, make a lot of a in the content, the readers will end up picking out the errors rather than reading the description itself.

The same goes for other errors, such as spelling or punctuation mistakes.

Here are some tips that you can try out to find and eliminate all such errors from your product descriptions:

1. Always proofread the finished descriptions for spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors. If you don’t trust your own judgment in finding them, you can take some help from a friend or from a professional editor.
2. Once you’re done with the above, read the description again from the customer’s perspective. If you find any inconsistency or needless elongation anywhere in there, make sure to remove it.
3. Always check to see if there is any plagiarism in your product description. It is easy and common for product descriptions to come back with some plagiarism, especially if the product happens to be generic. If there is any plagiarism in the content, you should eliminate it by either removing the plagiarized content itself or by rewording it to get rid of the resemblance.

Conclusion

There are a lot of other tips and tricks in the book that you can follow to make your descriptions hit home. However, the ones we’ve described above are some of the main and important ones.