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When I get stuck for a fresh and engaging way to talk about a product, I rarely look for inspiration among other marketers. Most of them seem to be copying each other.
Instead, I study product reviews.
I go to the trade press and the blogs and magazines and see how journalists and columnists talk about products like yours. For my money, they often do a better job of inspiring customers than we marketers and copywriters do. That’s because their do-or-die job is to write stuff that is interesting, useful, compelling.
And what’s compelling is not the corporate line, or the ‘key features list’ from the product team.
Customers want to hear about the experience of using the thing. Of living with it. Of selling it to the boss. The want to see how it fixes gnarly problems. Or, sometimes, how it actually works.
Read David Pogue of the New York Times. Walt Mossberg. TechCrunch. Engadget. Or the top publications or thinkers in the industry.
Notice what they talk about: Here’s what you see when you open the box. Here’s how it feels in your hands. Here’s how you put it together. Here are some neat things you can do with it. Here’s what it does really well. Here’s what happens when you try this. . . or do that. Does it fit in your rack space? Is it a pain to configure? How big is the thing?
Here is David Pogue on a Verizon wifi product:
Incredibly, there is such a thing. It’s the Novatel MiFi 2200, available from Verizon starting in mid-May ($100 with two-year contract, after rebate). It’s a little wisp of a thing, like a triple-thick credit card. It has one power button, one status light and a swappable battery that looks like the one in a cellphone. When you turn on your MiFi and wait 30 seconds, it provides a personal, portable, powerful, password-protected wireless hot spot. . .
. . .you’re spared the plug-and-unplug ritual of cellular modems. You can leave the MiFi in your pocket, purse or laptop bag; whenever you fire up your laptop, netbook, Wi-Fi camera or game gadget, or wake up your iPhone or iPod Touch, you’re online.
Last week, I was stuck on a runway for two hours. As I merrily worked away online, complete with YouTube videos and file downloads . . .
By contrast, we marketers and copywriters tend to talk in brochurespeak and bullet points. We sound like a corporation talking to a target vertical about the attribute matrix derived from market research.
We should cut that out. We would get more people interested.
It’s interesting that we often refer to our marketing content as ‘product literature’, or ‘sales literature’.
Most of time, of course, it ain’t even close to ‘literature’. Those product sheets and web pages are pretty stiff reading, mostly. (I know. I inflicted reams of sales blather on the world before I reformed.)
The hard-boiled view is, “So what? We’re not writing goddam literature, we’re trying sell something.”
But when you think of it, if we’re trying to get people passionately interested our stuff, literature is precisely what we need.
And by literature, I mean writing that can carry one away, evoke emotions, engage the brain, paint a dazzling picture that just won’t go away.
That’s what it takes to sell things, whether process control systems, injection-molding release agents or ethernet networking.
Plant an idea or vision in the buyer’s head. Let him see how it works, and imagine himself using this thing. Get him to see a solution. And feel that it’s right. Maybe even get him to see this issue from a whole different way.
Get him thinking maybe, just maybe, he’ll get this sticky problem off his desk for good, look like a genius while he’s at it.
I don’t mean getting cute or corny, or descending into infomercial-style hype. I mean talking human to human about neat things this product or technology can do. Show it, get him to feel it.
And do it so vividly and persuasively that, for the moment, he’s deep into the story, seeing it his mind.
Which is what literature does.
How do you make a technical product sound alluring? How do you make the thing come alive? How do you get techs to think, “Oooh, I want that”?
Try a trick that I swiped from the old Banana Republic catalog.
 The model for compelling product copy Ages ago, before the company went yuppie, they used to sell exotic travel clothing: khakis, boots, and other gear that Indiana Jones might wear.
Their irresistible formula: Start with an interesting product, then paint a picture that makes you ache to own one:
“We wore the short-sleeved version on a six-hour Land Rover trip across the Yucatan. Even in 98-degree sun, the wide-weave fabric kept us remarkably cool, wicking away perspiration at what felt like a gallon an hour.
“Our friends, in their conventional cotton shirts, were soaked through and miserable. And with nine roomy pockets, our maps, cigars, film, and flask were always handy. No need to tote haversacks. Unlike our friends, we arrived happy and ready for anything.” *
That’s exactly how we should be talking about ceramic coatings and concrete additives and monitoring systems for steam turbines.
What is it like to use this thing? How does the surface feel to the touch after curing? What clever things can you do with the reconfigure module?
Save the bullet points, specs and schematics for later. Help me picture this thing humming away in my data center.
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* I made this up. But that’s how I remember the feel of the copy. The catalogs are long gone, but people still read them. Old copies sell for ten bucks.
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