Make every word of your product copy worth its weight in gold!

Words appear in every corner of our daily lives. They are symbols that carry information and are also symbols of communication between people.

The role of text between products and users is immeasurable. On the other hand, text appears so frequently that we tend to ignore it.

For example, when a brand wants to communicate its image or advantages to consumers, it often does so through advertisements, posters, brochures, promotional videos, and so on.

No matter what form of communication, text is a vital part. For advertisements, the main component is text; for posters, text is the finishing touch on the picture.

In the eyes of marketers, this type of text has a special general term, called copywriting.

The value of copywriting lies in accurately conveying meaning rather than piling up long-winded words, and emphasizing quality rather than quantity. Especially for product copywriting , the length of product copywriting is often dozens of words, or even just a few words. However, these few bits of text can bring huge profits to the company.

For example, the slogan of our leading herbal tea brand Wanglaoji is: "If you are afraid of getting a sore throat, drink Wanglaoji". These seven simple words have pushed Wanglaoji to the top of the herbal tea industry. The value of these seven words is difficult to measure in terms of money.

So how can we write high-value product copy?

The role of sales-oriented product copywriting is to sell products to consumers and then create revenue, which means making money for the company.

What can achieve this effect is valuable product copywriting.

In the role of sales-oriented product copywriting, two points are mentioned.

The first is to sell products to consumers.

The second is that companies make money.

The way to reflect the value of product copywriting is to improve the capabilities of these two points.

In logical concepts, if the goal is clear, then the method to achieve this goal can be traced based on the existing conditions.

From the above two points, we can discover three key elements that reflect the value of product copywriting: products, consumers and profits. If you don’t understand these three elements clearly when writing copy, it’s impossible to create high value.

For products, what we need to do is to find or create a "selling point" that can impress consumers. For consumers, it is necessary to understand what their real needs are for consuming the product. As for profit, it means telling consumers why our products are expensive.

1. Explore product selling points

The selling point mining of products can be divided into the following three categories:

1. Focus on one point and expand it into a surface: The copy points out a certain feature of the product. Although others also have it, they have not expressed it in the copy.

From the time a product is produced to the time it enters the market, it is already a finished product. From finished products to products with selling points, the products in between have not actually changed much. What is different is actually the product copywriting. For many products, there is often a period of invisibility between their release and their popularity.

For example, Uni-President Orange Juice was launched in 1998, but it was not popular among the public at that time and its sales volume was not ideal. But in 2001, Uni-President Orange Juice became a trend because of its advertising slogan "More C, More Beautiful", and its sales volume was the highest, occupying half of the market for several years.

There has not been much change in the product itself between the Fresh Orange Juice launched in 1998 and the popular Fresh Orange Juice in 2001. But, because of a simple sentence, such a big change occurred. Whether or not you can discover the selling points of a product is sometimes a matter of life and death for the product.

In 2001, the brand Orange Juice used health factors as its selling point, and magnified the selling point through product copywriting, making the selling point of health and beauty directly become the product’s facade.

Then use this selling point to generate revenue for the company. As for orange juice, being rich in vitamin C is a characteristic of all orange juice, but other orange juice brands do not mention this feature. Therefore, when Uni-President Orange Juice first linked vitamin C with health and beauty, the product’s selling point was created.

In many cases, the product itself has many selling points. When writing product copy, company-related personnel should think more about the product and think divergently. Perhaps a flash of inspiration at some moment will create immeasurable wealth for the company.

2. Same meaning, different expressions: For many industries, there are some product selling points that we may be very clear about, but many times, magnifying these selling points does not have much marketing impact on product sales. It's like the same story told in different ways by different people. For the audience, the degree of excitement is also different. What this means is that if a product's selling point has become a consensus in the industry, then it is imperative to change the way the product's selling point copy is expressed without exploring other selling points.

With the development of the times, people's living standards have gradually improved, but with the occurrence of various food safety issues, healthy eating has become a hot topic nowadays. Under this general trend, various cheesy advertisements have followed, all of which aim to explain that their products are safe and pollution-free. Slogans like "Feixi old chicken, harmless and more satisfying!", "Exquisite local chicken, I guarantee it with my stomach!", "Feixi old hens are fed green food, so you can be healthy!", "Nongmuxiang local chicken, you will never forget it, unique taste of chicken" and so on, these kind of advertising slogans, they are all trying hard to talk about how healthy their own farmed chickens are and how delicious they are to eat, but when everyone says this, for consumers, this selling point can no longer stimulate them. But one advertisement used a different way of expression and successfully expressed the selling point of "health".

I'm rustic, but I'm healthy

We are very local; (Jixi black local pigs, local chickens, local ducks)

We are not young anymore; (breeding cycle is more than one and a half years)

We are free but the living conditions are difficult; (we roam freely in the mountains and forests, eating only coarse grains, weeds and mud)

We are covered in mud and smelly, but we are fresh, fragrant and delicious, and we can't stop eating them. (Various conditions make meat delicious, nutritious and healthy)

When this advertisement came out, it also talked about the selling point of the "health" of local livestock, but the previous product copy could only be said to be symbols and could not bring intuitive selling point stimulation to consumers. However, the following product copy talks about the topic of health from the perspective of local livestock, which is more interesting and attracts more attention.

I saw this advertisement when I was waiting for the bus. I had nothing to do, so I glanced back and saw it. The image of the duck wearing a straw hat in the picture left a deep impression on me.

3. Create new functions and new selling points: Many demands arise with the changes of the times. Innovative functions mainly fall into the following three categories:

① When marketers discover demand and then convert it into products in a short period of time, this operating mode is a type of innovation function.

② Create products that are ahead of their time. Such products themselves are selling points.

③If the enterprise can achieve it, it will own the entire market. This means that what we now think is impossible will become possible.

In these three cases, except for the first one, the latter two do not depend on how brilliant the copywriting is, but only on making the message clear.

In the first category, there are many examples of products being created quickly through demand.

For example, the demand for short videos sprouted among the masses, and then the Douyin short video app was developed. At that time, its product copy was "Record a beautiful life". In the advertising video, through different scenes and corresponding simple copy, it catered to the needs of the masses at that time, making the Douyin app instantly popular on the Internet.

For such undeveloped areas, it is very easy to extract selling points because the demand itself is its selling point. As the industry develops, the needs of the masses will gradually be met. At that time, extracting new selling points is what companies need to consider carefully.

For categories ② and ③, their selling points lie in the functions of the products themselves. All the product copywriter has to do is to explain the function clearly.

For example, if a company develops a battery that can fully charge an electric car in one minute and has a range of 1,000 km, I believe that the product copywriter only needs to send out the previous order description to receive a large number of orders. This is a product that is ahead of its time. It is a product that turns the impossible into the possible. It does not need to be promoted or refined because it is a selling point in itself.

The reason why Apple still occupies the leading position in the mobile phone market in 2019 is because their company’s philosophy is to “create products that transcend the times.”

2. Understanding Consumer Demands

Products are produced to serve consumers. An enterprise’s readiness to grasp the essential needs of consumers is the primary condition for promoting its products.

Why is the slogan “If you’re afraid of getting a sore throat, drink Wanglaoji” so popular? This is because the product copy directly reflects the needs of consumers and expresses the concept that the product can meet the needs of consumers.

There are many product copywritings like this, such as the slogan of Dongpeng Special Drink: "If you are young, you should stay awake and work hard." This copy does not explain the working principle of this functional vitamin drink, but directly simulates a podium to explain the needs of consumers. What the product copy expresses is: If you are sleepy but still want to work hard, Dongpeng Special Drink will meet your needs.

Understanding consumer needs is the focus of product copywriting, so how can we understand consumer needs?

What consumer demand represents is the reason why consumers do this thing. To understand consumer needs is to discover the reasons why consumers do this.

For example: delicious food.

In the current consumption ratio of consumers, the amount paid for food accounts for a large proportion. In our traditional cooking techniques, there is a saying: "color, aroma and taste". In our previous concept, food is to fill hunger. After hunger is satisfied, taste needs gradually arise. But in today's catering industry, for many consumers, the appearance of food has become a more important demand than taste.

Let’s take grilled fish as an example: ① In the streets of our daily lives, there are many small shops, and their signs may be called "Grilled Fish on Paper" or "Charcoal-Grilled Live Fish". When we went in and tried them, we found that they tasted very good and the prices were generally between 68-88 yuan.

② In some slightly better food streets, there will also be familiar grilled fish food, but the taste of their shops may not be as good as the ones between 68-88 yuan. But they have a lot of customers and their business is very good. The prices in this type of store are generally between 88 and 110.

③ In some high-end commercial streets or shopping malls, there are also some grilled fish foods, but at this time the store signs of these grilled fish foods are no longer "Grilled Fish on Paper" or "Charcoal-Grilled Live Fish", but branded grilled fish like "Tanyu". The prices in their stores are often between 158-188. During meal times, their shop business will be very hot, and it is normal to see queues in front of the store.

In these three situations, we can see that, first of all, the difference in taste is not that big. Sometimes cheaper products taste better. Secondly, depending on the difficulty of dining, there is still a big difference between having to queue and not having to queue. So why is it that when the price difference is so big, the more expensive ones do better business?

The fundamental factor that leads to this situation is the difference in consumer demand. The food is the same and the taste is similar, but the store environment and the appearance of the dishes are different. In this era when young people like to post on WeChat Moments and record short videos, many times the first purpose of enjoying life is not to enjoy life, but to let friends know that he (she) is enjoying life. Driven by this situation, when they choose food, their needs are more on the store environment and the food appearance. As for the taste (it is impossible to tell whether it is delicious from the photos anyway), they don’t care.

The creation of product copy should be based on insight into consumer needs, so as to promote these needs and create an image in consumers' minds that can satisfy them.

3. Valuable and creates value

Through your own copywriting, tell consumers why our products are worth the price! Of course, this situation only exists if you want your product to sell at a higher price than most products in the current industry. If your business wants to sell products at normal prices, then there is no need to spend energy researching this type of product copy.

Based on the description in the above paragraph, it is not difficult to find that the creation of this type of product copywriting is for high-end products or high-end brand products in the industry. Therefore, the focus of this type of product copywriting is to provide further product premium through aspects such as brand or product effects.

An advertisement copy for Great Wall Red Wine: The three-millimeter journey takes ten years for a good grape.

At first glance, it is difficult to understand the meaning of this, but through the subsequent text, the readers will be deeply shocked.

Three millimeters, the distance from the outside to the inside of the bottle wall. Ten years means that it takes 10 years to cultivate a good grape. Through just a few simple sentences, the company's image of high requirements and high standards is displayed. In the context of this product copy, setting a higher price for this category of wine will easily be accepted by consumers.

By using product copywriting to explain in detail why the product is "valuable", the product can then "generate value" for the company.

The value of product copywriting lies mainly in the three aspects of refining the product's selling points, exploring consumer needs, and why the product is worth the price. Only by working hard to do these well can the product copywriting be worth every word.

Author: PR Home

Source: PR Home