You know you have an amazing beauty product in your hands and you want to start selling. Before you start, you need to write beauty product descriptions that sell. Where do you begin?
Well, you’ve come to the right place.
When you’re writing beauty product descriptions, you can consider these six vital aspects:
- Find your brand voice
- Sell the experience, not the features
- Get familiar with SEO basics
- Make your descriptions easily scannable
- Leverage social proof
- Consider hiring experts
Let’s check out the first aspect.
1. Find your brand voice
The importance of your brand voice
Establishing who you are and how you communicate your brand voice will connect and build trust with the people within and outside of your company.
Your brand voice captures the essence of what your company stands for. Your mission, your values, your story. You humanize your brand with your voice, allowing consumers to relate and be inspired by what your company encompasses.
Studies have shown time and time again that customers choose to buy from brands and people they trust.
Take this slide from the 2019 Edelman report. When your brand can build trust over time, customers will return for a purchase, be your advocate, and defend for your brand.
Without a clear brand voice, people can easily turn away from your company to another if they can’t relate, can’t vibe, or they can’t connect with your brand voice.
Now we can see that it’s important to cohesively communicate to your audience. So, how would you find your brand voice?
How to find your brand voice
The user persona
Think about who your audience is. Your ideal customer, your ideal reader. Are they 20-year-olds looking for all-natural skincare or makeup products or are they 55-year-olds looking for anti-aging products? You would talk to the two age groups differently in real life! Consider what their needs and desires are. How they would express themselves in person and online, what kind of challenges they might encounter, or what their Instagram page looks like.
Knowing your ideal customer will help you write a great beauty product description in a way that will connect and entice them.
Audit time!
This is what we like to call, a personal and professional audit. This means collecting all your previous pieces of writing and content to gather a sense of who you are, how you speak, and what you want the company to convey.
Here are some things to consider:
- Review your brand mission, core values, and mood boards
- Ask yourself: “How do I want people to feel when they consume my brand?”
- Write 3-4 pillar adjectives that describe your company accurately
So, having a consistent, clear brand voice will make you recognizable and trustworthy in the eyes of consumers. Make sure you have a clear brand voice before you start writing beauty product descriptions.
2. Sell the experience of owning the product
Customers don’t feel an authentic connection with features. They resonate with how the product can improve their lives in some way.
Keeping your buyer persona in mind, you want to stimulate their desire to own your makeup product. Take a look at the following examples from EM Cosmetics and Fenty Beauty. They did a fantastic job of showing that they care about their buyers’ needs.
EM Cosmetics:
As the example shows, EM Cosmetics speaks to their customers with a casual, friendly tone. “We’re giving you the shine of a 90s lip gloss…” as if they were giving a friend a small gift! They talk directly to the customer in first person, keeping it personable and letting them imagine what their lips would feel like with EM Cosmetics’ lip gloss. “Drenching your lips in a high-impact color.”
Fenty:
The beauty product description here emphasizes how versatile and easy it is for anyone to pick up any shade for whatever mood they’re in.
“Whether you’re looking for the perfect red, everyday nude, or moody blue, Mattemoiselle Plush Matte Lipstick makes it easier than ever to rock the entire rainbow”.
Fenty understands how women find it difficult to match lipstick with moods and outfits so they targeted this benefit in their beauty product description.
You can tell your potential buyer all the features you want (and yes, we know how great your makeup products are!) but it won’t stick with them if they can’t see the benefits.
So, it’s one thing to list out product features, it’s another to show them what it’ll be like to live without your product.
3. Get familiar with SEO basics
How does an SEO-friendly beauty product description help you?
An SEO-friendly beauty product page ensures that customers who are searching for your product can seamlessly find what they’re looking for. Ultimately, we want our visitors to feel at ease when they’re searching through the endless possibilities online!
As your product descriptions become more and more SEO-friendly, search engines are more likely to showcase your site to a potential customer when they make a query on any search engine.
It’s crucial to write beauty product descriptions that provide the necessary information your customers need to know before they make an informed purchase decision.
But how can they find your site if your product page isn’t even on the search engine’s first page?
Keywords
When you optimize keywords, your beauty product pages will take on variation and stand out from others. This will help your page ranking and SEO.
Play around with free keyword tools such as Wordstream. It’s important to get familiar with software such as this. Find short-tail keywords (1-2 words long) and long-tail keywords (3-5 words long) that have high search frequency (volume) and low competition (keyword difficulty). You don’t want to compete with huge brands on a search engine’s first page.
Generally, big companies dominate the keywords that are 1-2 words long. Smaller companies can stand a chance by utilizing long-tail keywords (3-5 words). Longer keywords can be of benefit to your product as it’s more specific to what you’re selling. For example, anyone can sell “black mascara”, but your brand can be the one that sells, “weatherproof jet black mascara”.
Take the time to find different words and phrases relevant to your product.
Start with a list of keywords, then expand with another free tool like Ubersuggest. Once you find the right set of keywords, you can strategically place them throughout your product description.
Unique, reader-first content
Unique content
Writing up your own, unique beauty product description is always better for your SEO efforts. When you copy content from similar websites, search engines will notice a duplicate, and it won’t improve your page ranking.
Keyword-stuffing
What’s keyword-stuffing? It’s a technique companies use when they “stuff” a webpage with the same keyword or phrase wherever they see fit. You might see some examples like:
- Adding words out of context of the description. The keyword might not be relevant to the topic of the page at all!
- Repetitive use of words or phrases that don’t seem natural to read.
What does keyword stuffing look like in a product description? Here’s an example:
“This all-natural organic skincare line is the best set for you. The all-natural organic skincare products are made with natural, wholesome ingredients. No other companies will have an all-natural skincare line like this.”
Search engines will often ignore sites that keyword-stuff.
Search engines are now focused on providing value for users instead of grabbing the first pages with the highest amount of relevant keywords.
There’s no need to keyword stuff anymore.
Although keyword stuffing can be tempting to do, it won’t feel natural for your potential customer to read.
4. Easy to scan
The Nielsen Norman group found that 79% of their test users scan web pages to pick out individual words that benefit them in what they’re searching for. Rarely anyone reads web pages word-for-word.
There’s multiple ways you can make your product descriptions scannable.
- Include white spaces
- Hierarchy of text
- Bullet points
- Mini graphics with each feature
- Eye-catching media such as video or images so you can show your product to potential customers in an instant
Take a look at this example on Blanka’s website:
You can see a clear hierarchy of text by the different font sizes and bolded text. A small graphic pairs with each of the six features to capture the customers’ attention. Also, the bullet points are used to lay out the benefits so readers can easily scan.
So, let your buyer find the information they want in an instant so they can stay on your page to buy instead of navigating away.
5. Leverage social proof
Collecting reviews and star ratings for your beauty store is one of the best ways to build trust with your customers.
With each review from a buyer, your prospective customers can gather more information on the benefits of your product. They can deem your company as trustworthy because you’re delivering what you promised to happy, satisfied customers!
Using a third party Shopify app to connect to your beauty store will give you the transparency you need for your customers. There are a couple of apps we found useful! Reviewbit automates social proof collection through Whatsapp, a popular texting app. Try Judge.me for free. They’re a verifiable and reputable Shopify app you can add to your online store!
Their automated system to generate reviews for your products will give you peace of mind. Furthermore, not only will Judge.me help you with collecting authentic reviews, the app also boosts organic traffic by optimizing reviews. You can learn more about how they do it here.
6. Consider hiring experts
Let’s be real. Writing SEO-friendly beauty product descriptions can be complicated.
Hiring an SEO freelancer can boost your product pages’ visibility on search engines. They’re seasoned professionals who know the inner workings of link building, content strategy, and optimizing keywords.
So, before you hire the best SEO expert out there…
Know what you need
For your product pages, you’ll need a copywriter who understands user intent, content marketing and SEO.
It’s not a bad idea to write your own product descriptions first so you fully understand what to look for if you do end up hiring a freelancer to write for your store.
Ask to see their Portfolio and/or References
If they’re worth your time and money, they will have a portfolio. Check their website to see their track record first, browse their work, and ask for references if freelancers are a little pricier than others.
Browse Fiverr
With their trustworthy star-rating and review system, Fiverr makes it simple to find experienced freelance writers who understand SEO. You can take a look and determine how much you’re wanting to pay for an expert to do the beauty product description writing!
Conclusion
To wrap it all up, here’s a recap of the 6 steps you need to follow to write beauty product descriptions that sell:
- Find your brand voice. Your brand voice is the foundation of every piece of writing you’ll do for your company. So, figuring out your user personas during this step is a great start.
- Sell the experience, not the features. People care about the benefits, not so much about the features.
- Get familiar with SEO basics. Using the keyword tools we’ve mentioned, and strategically placing keywords throughout your page will boost your page ranking on search engines.
- Easy scanning. Make your page easily scannable for consumers to find the information they need in a jiffy. Use white spaces, bullet points, mini graphics, videos and photos.
- Leverage social proof. Using powerful tools like Judge.me can boost organic traffic and build trust with your buyers online.
- Consider hiring experts. There’s no shame in asking for help on your journey to success! Hire an expert on Fiverr for your beauty product descriptions.
Although it’s important to optimize your product descriptions for search engines, don’t forget that in the end, you’re writing for real people. By utilizing all these tips, you’re on track to writing powerful beauty product descriptions that sell.
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