The Sizzle and the Steak: The Art of Writing Great Product Copy

I used to work as a copywriter for Brookstone, a company made famous by its vibrating massage chairs, often seen in airport lounges, nail salons and your parents’ basement. If waitressing was the job that taught me about time management, Brookstone is where I learned to sell just about anything. Because that’s what I had to do.

A typical day went like this: I’d come in to find a pile of new products on my desk. For example, a rainbow luggage strap, motion-activated candy dispenser, digital coin sorter and backyard zipline. I’d immediately be filled with a combination of amusement and despair. Then I’d take the office Razor to get a cup of coffee at the office Keurig machine (both new and exciting inventions at the time) and get down to work.

I knew I’d done my job when, at the end of the day, I genuinely wanted each and every one of those products. All creative directors since the dawn of Draper have told writers to “Sell the sizzle, not the steak.” Yes, right, fine. But how do you do that exactly? I quickly learned a process that I still use today. It begins by considering …

Four Questions Every Product Copywriter Must Answer

  1. What is this thing anyway? (Product)

At Brookstone, it wasn’t always obvious. And if it was obvious — a pillow, say — that wasn’t enough. Is it a pillow for side sleepers or back sleepers? For nighttime or napping? Is it made of memory foam or a hypoallergenic down alternative?

If you’re writing about pillows but don’t moonlight as a chiropractor, you need to do a little research — how is a side-sleeping pillow different from a back-rest pillow? What are the benefits of each? Start by Googling, “Benefits of different types of pillows.”

The key here is to absorb, not cut and paste. Every industry has its own language, and this is your chance to build your vocabulary. Create a list of words and phrases you can draw upon later — support, cradle, conforming, comfort, etc.

  1. What kind of a person would want to buy it? (Audience)

Just because a product is made for a man or a child — or a man-child — doesn’t mean that’s your audience. Your audience is whoever is making the purchasing decision. At Brookstone (at least when I was there; things may have changed), it was a middle-aged, educated, suburban mother buying gifts for her husband, who craved outdoor adventure but spent most of his time at a desk job in the city. Yes, get that specific.

  1. What do I know about this specific product? (Features)

Now that you have a basic knowledge of the world in which the product lives, your job is to figure out what makes it unique. What is the loft? Is it soft or firm? What’s it stuffed with? How about the casing? Can you throw it into the washing machine, or do you have to get it dry-cleaned? Is it made locally or abroad? And if abroad, from a factory covered in suicide nets or a small, women-owned business? You get the point.

  1. What problem is this product solving? (Benefits)

Finding the benefit is easy: Take any feature and ask, “So what?” For instance, you know the pillow you’re writing about is made of something called “memory foam” … so what? In your research, you learned that memory foam was invented by NASA. That’s a pretty cool fact, and definitely product-description gold, but it’s not the benefit. So dig a little deeper.

The reason NASA invented memory foam was to improve seat cushioning and crash protection in flight. If you were writing about seat cushions, the big benefits here would be comfort and safety. But you’re writing about pillows, so how would that translate? How about this: It supports your head and aligns the small bones in your neck no matter what position you’re in.

Now you’re getting closer to a benefit. But why do you want klonopintabs.com your head and neck cradled? Because you’ll sleep better and your neck won’t hurt in the morning. Ding, ding, ding. That’s the benefit statement.

I like to try to work the main benefit(s) into the product description whenever possible. Additional benefits (e.g. easy to clean, eliminates allergens) belong in the features section. You’ll see how this all fits together below.

The Anatomy of a Product Description

Now that you’ve collected the information you need, it’s time to begin writing. Go ahead and get creative with your language, but professional product descriptions should follow pretty closely to the below format. Because it works.

Here’s a recent product description we wrote for Puma:

Jago V Running Shoes

Leggo My Jago

No, we didn’t improve this classic shoe by dousing it with syrup. But what we did do is douse it with some ultra high-tech cushioning technology. And yeah, you’re not going to want to share.

Features:

  • Lightweight leather upper for movement and flexibility
  • Perforated tongue for a little built-in air conditioning
  • Reinforced stitching for durability
  • PUMA tenCELL heel unit for maximum shock absorption
  • Traction-patterned outsole for a superior grip

Now let’s take a closer look at each of these elements so that you, too, can have fantastic product descriptions that scream, “Buy me, buy me.”

Element 1: Product Name

Jago V Running Shoes

The first line of any description should be the official trademarked name of the product. This is important for search purposes.

Element 2: Short Headline

Leggo My Jago

The second element is a headline that appeals to a potential buyer. Puma was going for a fun voice with a bit of an edge, so we gave them a headline that matched. But headlines don’t have to be clever. In fact, you’ll often see product headlines that simply state the key benefit of the product. This works, too.

For example, with the aforementioned rainbow luggage tag, the headline was simply: “Makes it easy to identify your luggage.” It’s still for sale if you want one … or if you just want to see the kind of copy I wrote when I was starting out. I know; I think it’s a little clunky, too.

Element 3: Product Description

No, we didn’t improve this classic shoe by dousing it with syrup. But what we did do is douse it with some ultra high-tech cushioning technology. And yeah, you’re not going to want to share.

The product description is often called “the romance copy” because your goal is to get a potential customer to fall in love with your product. This is not the place to cram in every single detail about the product. You want to set a mood and capture someone’s imagination. Tell them something they can’t see in the product photography or read about in the feature bullets.

For example, maybe the product has an interesting origin story, as with the memory foam pillow. In the case of this shoe, we had a little fun with the product’s unusual name, associating it with another highly coveted item: the Eggo waffle.

Element 4: Features and Benefits

Features:

  • Lightweight leather upper for movement and flexibility
  • Perforated tongue for a little built-in air conditioning
  • Reinforced stitching for durability
  • PUMA tenCELL heel unit for maximum shock absorption
  • Traction-patterned outsole for a superior grip

As you can see, Puma is calling this section “Features,” but it’s really both — features and benefits. (The benefit comes after the word “for” in each bullet.) This is the space where you can get into technical details, construction/fabric, etc., and why the potential customer should care (benefit).

Many companies choose to fold features into the product description. I think this is usually a mistake, as that’s where you should tell the product’s story. Plus, including feature bullets can make the product description too long. It’s much cleaner to just pull them out into their own section.

And there you have it. That’s everything you need to know about writing professional product descriptions that actually sell products. To see more product descriptions in action, check out our portfolio.

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