Marketing Experts Reveal Top Strategies To

Arlen
[00:00:27]
Welcome to the e-commerce marketing podcast. Everyone. I am your host, Arlen Robinson, and today I’m very excited for our special guest, Welcome to the e-commerce marketing podcast everyone. I am your host Arlen Robinson and today I’m very excited for our special guest Karon Thackston who is president of Marketing Words a full-service copywriting and content agency that helps businesses convert better, sell more and build a better business since 1999. Welcome to the podcast, Karen.

Karon
[00:01:32]
Thanks, Arlen. I appreciate you having me.

Arlen
[00:01:34]
Yes. Not a problem. Well, you know, one of the things that we’re gonna be discussing today of course, is, you know, things that I know are very you’re very well versed on, which is gonna be creating compelling product descriptions that captivate and convert. It’s a really a topic that we’ve never really covered here on the, on the e-commerce marketing podcast, because I know a lot of our listeners out there of course, are e-commerce business owners or are affiliated with businesses and do marketing for them, you know, before we get into all of that, I always like to know how people got to where they are today. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got to got into what you’re doing today?

Karon
[00:02:17]
Well, I have always been attracted to marketing since I was just a little girl. And when let’s see, it was the summer after I graduated from high school that I happened to meet up with two of the DJs that did one of the morning shows at a local radio station. Okay. And they invited me by, I think they were joking because of course you, you know, you have to get there at five or six o’clock and this is a teenager who’s on summer break. So they were like, yeah, sure. Stop by the show one morning and bring us some biscuits and say, hi, well I did. Okay. Long story short, their receptionist got badly injured and had to be, have surgery and be out for the entire summer. And oh wow. They asked if I would be willing, you know, looking for a summer job, you wanna come answer phones and help out and whatever. Well, I didn’t wanna turn that down. Right. My first day on the job, one of the sales people came running in and said, we’ve got to get this on the air today. Or the client is not gonna go through with the buy. Do you know how to write, copy? Sure. I do. And she handed me the stuff and ran off to her office and I turned around and looked at the girl next to me and said, what’s copy.

Arlen
[00:03:30]
Wow.

Karon
[00:03:31]
So very much on the job training. But I, I have always just had a knack for writing and after two or three attempts and going back and forth, nailed it down. Okay. And it went on the air. Okay. The client liked it. It actually, they actually ran it. I didn’t get fired or anything. So, right. That was the start of, of all of it. And then fast forward to 1999, when I was tired of working at full service ad agencies, I was tired of working at in-house ad agencies. And I wanted to do the part of it that I loved the most, which was the writing. Okay. But do it my way. And marketing words was born in 1999. And it does not even seem like it has been as long as it has been. You said you were in, you started your business in 1999 too. So that is correct. You know, a little bit of history behind us.

Arlen
[00:04:24]
That is for sure. Yeah. It’s

Karon
[00:04:26]
Just a tiny bit,

Arlen
[00:04:27]
Right. Just a little bit. It’s, it’s been quite a journey for sure. And I know you’re end as well.

Karon
[00:04:32]
Yep. So it’s, it’s been a blast. We have been online since practically the birth of the internet. Maybe just a two years after it got mainstream. We, we hit the, the ground running and just haven’t stopped since. So it’s, it’s been a blast.

Arlen
[00:04:47]
Okay, great. Yeah. That’s, that’s awesome. And there’s a really, actually an important lesson that you, you, you mentioned that I kind of pulled out from that story. When you mentioned that you were at the radio station, you got thrust with that opportunity to create the copy for that marketing person at the radio station. And you said, absolutely. You could do it. That’s an important lesson. I, it reminds me of, of something, a high school teacher told me that, regardless of whether you can do these things or not, if you get an opportunity like that always say, always say yes, and, you know, do whatever you can. He used to say fake it till you make it. And you know, you did just that you knew that that was an incredible opportunity and you were gonna, you were gonna figure it out, even if you didn’t know exactly what copy was at the time, you, you know, you took that opportunity and, and really ran with it. So that’s, yeah, that’s an awesome lesson for, for everyone listening that.

Karon
[00:05:39]
Well, trust me at 18 years old, there was no thought to it. Okay. I, I, it wasn’t that thought out at all. It was, I don’t wanna lose this job. I better at least give it a shot, so. Right.

Arlen
[00:05:50]
Gotcha. Gotcha. Well, that all sounds, sounds good. And it definitely brought you to where you are today. So, you know, one of the things that I, I deal with all the time is we have a lot of e-commerce businesses that, that utilize our product, our OCI affiliate software, the OmniSTAR affiliate software. And I see on a daily basis, I’m looking at e-commerce websites every day, people selling, you know, things that you could never imagine, you know, online. And so I’ve seen it all. And one of the key things is that I guess doesn’t get a lot of focus on is the descriptions of actual products on a particular website. And I don’t think from what I see a lot of businesses, I don’t think really put a lot of thought into it from what I typically see on an ongoing basis. So what I wanna first ask you is generally is, is there a rule of thumb that a business should follow when thinking about, you know, creating their product descriptions?

Karon
[00:06:51]
Well, it’s so specific to the content management system that each retailer uses that there are a couple of general rule thumbs, but they’re very general. I mean, you, you need to, this is the, the sin that most retailers commit is using. What’s called canned copy. Okay. It’s the copy that the manufacturer of the product, you know, if you’re selling blenders or whatnot, right. You know, this is, copy that Vitamix I provided to you. Right. And you just slap it up on the website. Well, there are how many thousands of other retailers out there that carry blenders, including Vitamix and they all have the same copy, right? So not only does it not help the shopper at all, going from site to site, to site and having the exact same information, but it also is not helpful to your search engine rankings because it is even though it’s stretched across multiple domains, it is duplicate content.

Karon
[00:07:54]
There’s nothing original about your page. Sure. So generally you will want some type of differentiating information on the page. If you sell so many tens of thousands of products that you can’t possibly hire a staff member, a, a junior copywriter, or what have you to just rephrase these, then put them in as is, but at least add a line or two, add some commentary, bring in a review from Google or from another page that’s linked to your site, right? Not something from some, some other site, but put a review on there or something to make that page different. Think of yourself. If you were to shop for a blender, you know, what is it gonna come down to? If everybody has the exact same information that leaves you with price, right? And the lowest price wins, you don’t want it to be that way on your site. So it would be extremely helpful for a shopper and for the search engines, if the canned product description, which is a great starting point was completely rephrased. And you also put some additional information on the page, but everybody’s not in a position to do that. The more unique you can make your pages the better off you’re gonna be.

Arlen
[00:09:20]
Yeah. That’s, that’s definitely true. And you know, I, what you said, I see it all the time. And, and surprisingly, even on, on Amazon, I’ve seen kind of what you said, companies and businesses that just kind of slap the manufacturer’s description right on there. And, you know, don’t even make any changes. And yeah, I guess you could say that, like you said, that’s really kind of a Cardinal sin. It’s, you know, there’s other companies that are doing the same thing, your copy and your product is not gonna stand out at one bit. And, you know, you’re not gonna benefit at all from any type of, you know, search engine, you know, traffic or whatever, because there’s no uniqueness there. So that, that definitely makes sense. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve for sure have seen that. Now. I know, I know the, one of the number one questions right now that I’m sure businesses that are listening are, are wondering is okay. You know, if, if I go through all of this trouble, I take the time to optimize all of my, all of my description, copy on my website. You know, let’s say I’ve got, you know, a couple hundred products on the site. How much does, could this actually really improve the overall conversions? I know that’s a kind of a general question, but does it make big that big of a difference? And you know, how will they start seeing that?

Karon
[01:10:36]
Well, you start seeing that with more sales, right? I mean, you have, it’s, it’ll be obvious when it kicks in and, and it begins to not only to help generate additional traffic to the page, but also having customers that are reading it and going, ah, look at that. I didn’t know this, that or the other thing, right? Oh, Vitamix blenders will do so. And so look, this one says it has two additional features that the other one doesn’t have, you have to keep in mind that when the manufacturers are creating this copy, they also are hiring junior copy writers who sit there and look at products and create a list of what the features are and whatnot. They don’t always get it. Right. Right. Even though it’s coming from the manufacturer, they may have left out a feature or two, they may not have accurately or enticingly described how these features work into the different benefits.

Karon
[01:11:38]
Sometimes you get a paragraph of extremely vague text followed by three extremely vague bullet points. And it’s really easy to improve that. Now, as far as what result will come from improving that, the copy on your descriptions. There’s no way to answer that question because it would depend first of all, on what shape the copies in to begin with, right? If other elements of the page are already optimized for search engines, as far as the traffic goes, but whether or not it improves your conversions will also depend on how well it’s written when it’s redone. But yes, we have seen instances in the past where customers have taken canned copy and replaced it with unique copy. And it has both increased their search visibility for that particular page, as well as increasing the conversions for that. But it would be a matter of testing. I never recommend that eCommerce companies jump all in with both feet and say, okay, we’ve got 6,000 products on our site.

Karon
[01:12:50]
Let’s do ’em all right. No. How about if we take maybe three from each category and C you know, if you’ve already gotten to a point to where the product copy is as well done, as it’s going to be on a particular site, then you need to be looking at other areas, improving your images. A lot of sites also use the canned images that are provided by the manufacturer, looking at the SEO strategy that you have working with a, a company that handles search engine optimization to do that, or whatever the other elements might be, because SEO and conversions are not strictly a matter of content. And copy. I mean, there are lots of different things that go into that puzzle.

Arlen
[01:13:36]
Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Karon
[01:13:39]
I would just say test a few at a time and see if what you’re doing is making a difference. If you begin to see that you’re moving in a positive direction, when you do a test of, you know, five or 10 or whatever, then do 20 the next time. Okay. Yeah. Most of those are working out good. Now we do 50 the next time and progress that way. Right?

Arlen
[01:13:59]
Yeah. That’s some good advice because you know, like you said, it doesn’t make sense. If you’ve got several hundred products, you know, to, to take, do one fail swoop, go through, make all the changes that you think you should make and then kind of sit back. You, you want to try a few and then see how that goes. But, you know, like you said, there is a lot of other factors, of course, when it comes to search engine optimization that, you know, Google and the other surgeons are looking for. So, you know, there’s a lot of things to, to consider with regards to, what’s gonna help your overall all rankings. But one of the things that I know, you know, business owners are also wondering, and you, you mentioned a couple of different scenarios. You know, you have some of the businesses that have, you know, hundreds of products, thousands, and you have some of the other businesses where, you know, they just have a few, but let’s say for those businesses that have quite a few products, let’s say, you know, it could be close to the hundreds, you know, do you, does it really make sense to hire, let’s say a writer upfront to do product descriptions because what I, what I’m constantly kind of hearing is when I talking to different business owners though will tell me, oh, okay.

Arlen
[01:15:12]
You know, I’m not a writer, a grammar’s terrible. I don’t really know how to best phrase this. It’s not my expertise. And so they typically just kind of try to throw anything up there and, you know, maybe modify some stuff for the manufacturer. Would it make sense for a business like that to, to invest in a writer up front, early on? What is, what’s your opinion on that?

Karon
[01:15:33]
There are several different ways that that can be handled and it will very much depend on what the business owner has in his or her budget for website copy and other things that deal with the, the production of the web pages and how they hope to proceed in the future and the current staff that they have. So we’ve done lots of different scenarios with all sorts of different types of E eco businesses. Okay. One is on the higher end. If you’re dealing with companies that already have a staff of someone, maybe that’s doing their blogging and their social media and whatnot. And that writer is interested in being trained as a copywriter. We’ve done that before, and we can, we have an e-book that is only about e-commerce copywriting. You can find that on our site at marketing words, dot com slash products, all the products that we have are there the digital products.

Karon
[01:16:31]
So you can go that way and train somebody that already exists in your company, or a new hire on how to write e-commerce copy. You can have someone like marketing words or whoever you choose create a digital workshop, a custom digital workshop for your team. If you have that, you can also have somebody come into your business and do on site training. If it’s a smaller company, and you’ve only got, you know, a hundred or two products, something like that, depending on your budget, yes, you would want to have a professional. Do those. Now we’ve also worked with smaller businesses and maybe done 20 or 30 different product descriptions. And then they see what we’ve done. You know, when we turn the copy in, they go, okay, now I get an idea. And then they can sort of emulate that with the rest of their product descriptions, but you’ll wanna watch where you cross the line of profitability, because when you’re outsourcing, it’s always going to be more expensive than if you’re paying a full-time staff member, a salary, or if you have even a part-time person that’s working on an hourly basis, it’s more expensive to outsource.

Karon
[01:17:46]
So the, the more product descriptions you have, the quicker you’re going to reach, or actually breach that level of profitability. So run your numbers and see, okay, I can, you know, if I have 300 that need to be done, once I get to 100, it would actually be cheaper for me to hire somebody part-time to be on my staff than to keep outsourcing this.

Arlen
[01:18:13]
Yeah, I see what you’re saying. Yeah. If it’s a small volume. Yeah. Maybe it makes sense to just outsource it. And especially if you can hire somebody that, you know, has a, a fair amount of expertise in that, and, you know, you can kind of get a good bank for your buck. Like you said, if it’s a small amount, but yeah. If you’re talking a large volume, you know, if you’re paying a per, you know, let’s say a per fee per actual description product description that that can definitely add up. So that makes that, that makes total sense,

Karon
[01:18:40]
Right. Especially when you get to these, you know, there are a lot of CMSs that have tabs in addition to your traditional one or two paragraphs and your three or three to five bullet points down below you see tabs, and it has, you know, maybe instructions or warranty information. And by the time you get done with that, you’re talking about a 500 word product description. Right. You know, by the, the paragraph up top, the bullet points, the title, and then four tabs that each have 400, you know, a word, a hundred words per tab or something like that. So obviously the more text you need, the higher, the price is gonna be. So just know where that profitability break is, so that if you get to the point to where you have so many, you know, okay, it’s time to start looking for a copywriter that can be on our team as our writer, and then we don’t have to outsource and pay the higher rate.

Arlen
[01:19:36]
Right. Right. Yeah. For, for sure. Now, with regards to, you know, getting somebody to create this actual, you know, copy for you. One of the things that I see is typically with most e-commerce websites, you know, it could seem a little daunting at first, but the bottom line is I think what you said earlier on picking a few products front upfront, trying that, whether you’re doing it yourself, or you have somebody redo the copy for those initial products, initially trying that first and the bottom line is most of these businesses, or a lot of these businesses, they only have a few main products that are kind, I guess you could say they’re best sellers. And so I think those would probably be the ones you wanna focus on first, and then all of the other, you know, ancillary products that may not sell quite as well, then, you know, you can focus on those later. So yeah, the, the rule of starting small first, definitely, you know, totally makes sense. Now, a little earlier, we, we, we briefly mentioned Amazon and, and the sellers that I’ve seen on, on Amazon with the descriptions, is there a really, a big difference as far as the product descriptions on Amazon versus on an E on a business’s own e-commerce website, are there different, there’s different rules of thumbs or things that they need to consider

Karon
[02:20:52]
Huge difference. Okay. Amazon is one knit picky, particular, little rule, happy machine. Okay. And you do not want to just take what’s on your website and stick it up on Amazon because it, it will almost certainly flop. Gotcha. I have never, in my life seen a company that had as many rules and regulations as Amazon does.

Arlen
[02:21:14]
Okay. Wow.

Karon
[02:21:15]
And stipulations, if you’re in this category, you have to do it this way. If you’re in this other category, you have to do it another way. So if you are a general retailer that has kitchenware and you have some grocery products and you have some apparel products, or, you know, like Walmart wood, or what have you, every one of those categories probably has at least a few different rules and regulations. Amazon refers to them as terms of service. So, you know, you can write your, your apparel listings and put those up on Amazon and maybe they do okay. And you use the same strategy to do that for your grocery items. And you end up getting your listings banned, or, you know, you end up having inventory put on hold because your account’s been suspended and things of this nature. It’s just, it, it can be quite frustrating. Okay. If you’ve never done it because Amazon doesn’t, unfortunately when you sign up for an Amazon account, I really wish they would require you to go to a particular page that gives a general introduction to selling on Amazon, but they don’t. Okay. It’s very much up to you to either work with someone that knows their way around well, or figure it out trial by fire. Wow.

Arlen
[02:22:31]
That’s that’s yeah. That’s really surprising that they don’t have something detailed for the sellers, you know, that are kind of, like you said, kind of break everything down, you know, just like, almost like a, a handbook for, for instance, but I guess they’re at a position where they don’t have to do that.

Karon
[02:22:48]
Well, the information is there. Okay. Inside, what’s referred to as seller central, which is their seller hub. Right. For information and contacting, you know, the representatives, if you have questions and what have you sure. But if you don’t know what to search for, you won’t find it. Oh sure. And what I wish they would do is once you sign up for an account, send you an email that says, download this, welcome to Amazon PDF, and then click to this page and read this and click to this page and click to that one and then read that one. Then you can start selling because that’ll give you a general overview, but that part they don’t do. Okay. So if you don’t know what to search for or where to look and seller central, which is massive, right. Then you’ll never find, you won’t even realize that you need to be looking for these terms of service because Amazon doesn’t point you in that direction. Gotcha. It can be a little frustrating.

Arlen
[02:23:43]
Yeah. I, I can see. Well, yeah, that is, that really is surprising where they, they don’t have anything quite like that, but yeah. I guess for whatever reason, they don’t, they don’t necessarily need to do that. Yeah. I mean, it makes sense that they’re that picky, like you said, they’re, you know, one of the most nit pickies pickiest companies out there and, you know, they’re, they, their wallet speaks to that. And I guess it, I guess they’re, they haven’t been that successful as successful as they are without being that, that particular. And yeah, it really, I guess it makes sense. And it makes a difference now, as far as you know, businesses right now that are listening, what do you think is a quick change? If, if you were to, let’s say consult with the business right now, and you had maybe 10 minutes with them, what’s one quick change that you would tell them with regards to their product descriptions that they could do right now to start seeing, you know, an immediate difference in their sales

Karon
[02:24:40]
Change, those product pages so that they’re not strictly canned copy. Okay.

Karon
[02:24:45]
Okay. Find a way, create a, a template for your writers to use or something that allows them to begin with the copy provided by the manufacturer, but then incorporates something else unique to the page, preferably something that will be helpful and, or interesting to your shopper, not just something that nobody else has for the sake of having it always, always think of your shopper first. And you know, if you put yourself in your shopper’s shoes, if you sell blenders, we’ll just continue with that example, have your staff sit down, give ’em, tell ’em, you know, okay, you want a blender that has this particular criteria, or maybe a blender for a certain use. You know, you want a blender that makes smoothies or something to that effect, right. And then have them go online and shop for a blender like that and see what their experience is. Get ’em to take notes. Are they seeing the same exact thing over and over again? You know, once they’ve narrowed it down, now I want this Vitamix blender, then go shopping for the Vitamix. Blender. Chances are pretty good that they’re gonna see the same exact thing on bed, bath and beyond. Okay. And you know, anybody else that has those particular blenders. Right. And it always defaults, okay. If everybody has the exact same blender, I’m going with the cheapest one.

Arlen
[02:26:08]
Right, right.

Karon
[02:26:09]
That’s so changing those product descriptions so that they are helpful and unique for your customer can not only improve your conversions, but many times it can also raise your bottom line because you don’t have to be the cheapest.

Arlen
[02:26:24]
Right. Right. That, that makes total sense. And especially these days, because like you said, there’s so many options out there when you’re trying to buy something like a blender, you know, you mentioned the Amazons, the bed bath and the end, you know, you’ve got best buy even, you know, there’s just, the list just goes on and on. And so if people are look, you know, so focused on the price and everybody has the same, you know, kind of templated description, there’s no difference. But if you, if you take that extra time to say, okay, if I’m a consumer, what am I gonna be concerned about? What’s gonna, what’s gonna win me over. And, you know, I really just kind of put yourself in those, their shoes. I think that would for sure go a long way.

Karon
[02:27:06]
Right?

Arlen
[02:27:07]
Well, Karen, we definitely appreciate you being here on the eCommerce marketing podcast. I think your information that everything that you’ve provided is gonna be invaluable to our listeners. Now, if anybody wants to get in touch with you, how do they do it? 

Karon
[02:27:22]
We have a wonderful [email protected] slash blog. Okay. And there’s a lot of information there about product descriptions that folks can pull up and read. As I mentioned before, you can go to the products page. Well, you can look up in ed marketing words.com and look up in the navigation. I think the, the one that has all the different types of eBooks and video series is called eBooks. And of course the blog is called blog. And if services are required, you know, you can click on that link and see the different types of services we provide. We also are building out our YouTube channel. So if you go to youtube.com/marketing words, you can find a lot of helpful videos there. And we spend a good bit of time on Facebook too. So look for marketing words on Facebook as well.

Arlen
[02:28:11]
Okay, great. Well, thanks again, Karen, it’s been a pleasure having you on eCommerce marketing PA podcast, and you know, you have a great day.

Karon
[02:28:19]
Thanks Arlene. You too.

Arlen
[02:28:23]
Thank you for listening to the e-commerce marketing podcast. You need to get more feedback and reviews from your customers and improve your customer retention. We have made it easy to do all of this with our advanced customer feedback software, just visit, get osi.com/feedback and sign up for a free trial. Today. That’s get osi.com/feedback.

Podcast Guest Info

Karon Thackston
President, MarketingWords.com