Writing effective copy for your Amazon product listings is no easy feat. Amazon now has over 157 million Prime Members in the USA alone. With so many customers comes with it some serious competition, all vying for attention. It can be difficult to stand out in the crowd and make sure you are getting your product noticed. It's one thing to pack your Amazon product listing with as many keywords as possible, but that will do nothing for you if a customer doesn't connect with the words. Strategically written, optimised listings that speak directly to your customers are what you need to make it in this game of fulfilled by Amazon. With the right guidance and a few simple tips, anyone can unlock the secret to writing persuasive Amazon copy that resonates with customers and drives sales. Follow our simple tips and you'll soon be unlocking the key to successful Amazon copywriting. Or...leave it to the experts and let us do it for you! We offer a done-for-you product listing description service to take the writers block off your hands. Reach out to us here to have a chat with us about how we can help you write Amazon product listings that rank and convert. In the meantime, here's a bit of an insight into how we do it and the approach we take to make our client's products jump off the page:
1. Know your customer, I mean really know them.
Ever heard of a customer avatar? We think it's a critical first step before you even put any pen to paper. A customer avatar is a fictional character who represents your "ideal customer". They are not “perfect people”, but they are the customers you're specifically trying to target and market to. We recommend picking at least 1, but preferably 2 customer avatars and describe them in some detail. When you know your customer avatar inside and out, you can design content that speaks to them on their level. When you're writing your content, you need to be picturing you customer avatars and write like you are speaking directly to them. What are their motivations, desires and pain points? What demographic is your customer avatar? Are they mostly male, female or does it not matter? Younger, older, student, professional? Who are you talking to? Let's use this analogy, have you ever had to engage in small talk at an event with strangers? An elderly gentlemen walks up to you with his granddaughter in hand and says hello. What do you say? How do you say it? What questions do you start asking? What tones are you using? How do you engage with him? Our bet is it's very different to how you engage with your bestie on a weekend. Is your avatar like your bestie? Or like the grandad? Our point is it's critical If you haven't done this exercise yet, it's well worth it.
2. What's the problem that needs to be solved?
Write your product description as if you were talking directly to your customer. Where would you start? You wouldn't just start rattling off product features right? Right?? You would want to get to know them, understand their needs and more than anything understand what the problem is that they're trying to solve. When you boil it all down, your product solves a problem for someone. That's all it does. So understanding who your customer is and what the problem is that they're facing is a massive step forward in creating effective and targeted copy just for them. Sometimes the problem isn't even a problem you would first think of. For example, let's take a product like a "get well soon hamper". This product might be filled with scented oils, candles, flowers, teas, nibbles and other comfort treats. What's the problem we're trying to fix here? It's not that the person who is sick is empty on tea and candles around the home. The problem is not that they need their home to smell nice, or a teddy bear to cuddle. The problem your customer (who by the way is the person purchasing the hamper, not the sick person) is trying to solve is multifaceted - they are looking for a product that will help their sick friend to feel comforted, thought of, treasured and reassured. The other problem it solves is a social one, helping your customer to feel like they are a good friend, that they are making an effort to keep the friendship strong. There is a lot more going on here than nice smelly things. You see when you're able to solve that customers REAL problem, that comes with so many added benefits to that customer. And it's the benefits you need to focus on.
3. Benefits are the real story, not features.
So we've just established that we need to focus on fixing our customers' problems. We're big believers that features don't solve problems. This one is the most common pitfalls in product listing copy today - too many features that customers either already know about or can see with their own eyes from your images. Features don't sell products, benefits do. It's the benefits that solve their problem and its well written benefits that will get the sale. Benefits are the real story of your product. And when you're able to tell that story well, the features sell themselves. So how do you write about benefits? How do you get started? How do you know what to say? What we do, is we start to list all of the benefits down on paper. Using the "get well soon hamper" example from before, we'll start listing the benefits (not features) one by one (let's my friend know that I care, uplifts their spirits, strengthens my friendship). After we've listed all benefits (all of which could be included in your listing copy) we then go deeper again and ask ourselves what are the benefits of all of these things combined? Asking ourselves what are the benefits of the benefits means we're going to another level of thought in order to truly grasp and fix the customer problem. This solves our customer avatar's core problem, every time. The other benefits are extra bonuses that bolster and enhance your copy.
4. Keywords and Optimisation.
Now that you are clear on who you're writing to, what the problem is you're solving and what the benefits are that solve that problem you're ready to start writing. The important part to factor in now is your keyword usage. Writing a beautiful description means nothing unless it's filled with the right keywords that help your listing index. The more keywords you have in your Amazon listing, the better Amazon understands what your product is and how they can show your product in the most relevant searches. Indexing your Amazon copy is key to ensuring that potential customers can easily find your product, and it can make all the difference in terms of sales figures. A well-indexed product page will allow shoppers to quickly come across essential information about a product without having to search for it. Here's where indexing becomes really important though. The more keywords you include the more Amazon can index those keywords. Keywords drive indexing, which drives clicks, which drive sales, which drive ranking. So if you're not indexing on a particular main keyword, you won't show up to the customer, you won't get the click, you won't get the sale and you won't ever rank. Our clients often ask us why they aren't showing up for certain keywords. We look at the listing and can straight away pick that they haven't used that combination of keyword in their listing and also aren't advertising on it either. How do we get the right keywords? We use Helium 10 and Jungle Scout for our keyword research when launching new products. These tools and many others have some great training to help you understand how to pull the best keywords out for your listing and we highly recommend them. Keyword selection is a whole other topic for later, but in essence keywords can all be broken down into long-tailed keywords and short-tailed keywords. All have different levels of competition, monthly search volumes and success factors. Sounding a bit tough or not your cup of tea? Let us do it for you - it's in our DNA.
5. Keywords that tell stories
One of the best ways to include keywords in your Amazon listing copy is by using them throughout your titles, bullet points, descriptions A+ content, and backend search terms fields. The trap for many of us is to pick the best keywords that make the most sense. Indexing and ranking is not king. Your customer is king. If your customer lands on your "get well soon hamper" listing and reads "This get well soon gift basket care package for women is the perfect after surgery gifts for sick friends" - guess what, you've lost them. This sentence has a monthly search volume of over 30,000 per month. Guess how many sales it will get you written like that? Zip. Zippo. Nadda. Expertly written copy, trumps keyword density any day of the week. You need both in sync though to make it ahead of your competition. So choose the most relevant keywords that allow you to tell the best stories to your customers. If you can't tell the story well, don't include the word. Use PPC advertising on that keyword instead, or place the keyword into your backend search terms section (along with all your keyword misspells and different language keywords. Your customers are smart, intelligent, educated and researched. They know what they want and they're looking for the brand that speaks directly to them in their imagery and messaging. Get this wrong and you'll miss a huge opportunity for conversion.
6. Copy should mirror your imagery
Your product images are what captures your customers' attention first - every time. If you images are good enough to grab them, they'll start to read your product listing description in detail to affirm their first impressions. Your images and copy should tell the same story in a succinct and clever way; with your copy subtly expanding on the key imagery points in a way that further grabs your reader and leaves them wanting to know more (about those benefits!). If someone looked at your images first the copy should make complete sense and visa versa. This creates repetition in a subtle way that reaffirms your key benefits and clarifies exactly why your customer should choose you.
7. You must be better than your competitors
Your customers will shop around and if you aren’t better (in either price or perceived value), they will go somewhere else. All you need is one aspect of your listing to turn a customer off and they're gone. So your responsibility is to incorporate all of the above in a way that is better than how your competitors are doing it. Open up your key 5-10 competitor listings and take notes on their key benefits. Learn them inside and out and remember, not their features, their benefits. If they are listing features, write down what their benefit should be, because your product should have this included. The idea being, your listing doesn't miss anything; you're covering and including everything your competitors do in a better written and more compelling way. Your customers should not be able to find a benefit that your competitors mention and you fail to mention, particularly if it's a key benefit to the problem they're trying to solve. It's your responsibility to be better, so take the time to make sure that you are.
8. Some key fundamentals when writing on Amazon product listing descriptions:
Your title should be no more than 200 characters long (in most categories).
Bullet points - you can have up to 5 bullet points that should not exceed 1000 characters.
Description - up to 2000 characters allowed.
Amazon no longer allows the use of HTML, emoticons, bold texts, italic texts etc when writing your listings, meaning that high quality, well written listings are even more important to help take your customers on a better journey.
For more on Amazon's rules in writing your descriptions be sure to check this out here.
Writing a great Amazon product listing for your brand doesn't have to be daunting. With these simple tips in mind (and the help of some software tools) you can create and optimize an effective listing that will help your product stand out from the crowd. Remember that this is fundamentally one of the most important aspects to your listing being a success. You have a responsibility to (1) know your customer, (2) know what problem you're solving for them, (3) know how your competitors are currently solving those problems, (4) use compelling language to speak directly to your customers about the benefits that solve their problem, (5) incorporate keywords to help index and rank, (6) complement your product images throughout your writing, and (7) play by Amazon's rules. Most importantly, have fun with it! Writing a product listing should be an enjoyable task that you look forward to completing each time. If you're hating it, let us take your biggest problem off your hands and turn it into a benefit! See what we did there? Did we just tell you how to solve your biggest problem? I dunno. Did we? Hit us up here.
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