The product brochure chore: what is the right recipe to use?

Written par

GdeGConsulting

in

Sell

Common Pitfalls

Your product brochures reflect the marketing performance of your company. Two pitfalls are common:

1.Technical information overload: the writer is an expert on the product, and no one else has stepped in to prioritise, filter and link the information together. The writer considers that the reader is also an expert.

2.Insufficient information: the writer is a communications professional, concerned with standardising the brochures within a standardised graphic framework, without necessarily having the knowledge to judge the relevance of the content for the reader. The reader enjoys a pleasant document, yet does not find the technical information that is important, to reassure him or her, or to meet his or her needs.

A Field-proven Recipe

Faced with this situation, a recipe I have often used successfully is to build the story in five steps:

• Step 1: Start with the basics. This means describing the product offer as if you were talking to a non-expert: first you describe the proposed system, the basic offer and any options, the application field, the technical and industrial maturity. Add a picture or a 3-dimensional drawing of the product.

• Step 2: At the top, the famous USP (Unique Selling Proposition): it summarises in a sharp and impactful way how the product provides the potential customer with a benefit that is both significant and unique compared to existing solutions: “Integrate this component into your system without engineering costs”, “Reduce spare parts references in stock by 50 per cent”, “The first connected equipment that complies with new cyber security standards”. A figure, that quantifies the economic benefit for the user, or a technical performance, helps to anchor the offer in the reader’s mind.

• Step 3: Just below this are the top 3 to 5 customer benefits: these are the benefits that your product can provide to the customer over the total life cycle of the product: “10 kg lighter than the previous version”, “standardised interfaces”, “lifetime extended to 300,000 hours”. Make sure that at least one of the benefits supports the USP. The benefits are expressed in the customer’s own words, which speak to their own pain points.

• Step 4: Below this is the set of technical specifications that support each of the 3-5 benefits selected at the top level, and only these! This approach eliminates the technical information that does not add to the sales pitch, while prioritising the information that demonstrates the claimed benefits. It creates a bridge between the two worlds: your company’s specialised jargon is translated into the customer’s language.

• Step 5: Let us go down one more level: to support the most important technical specifications, it is a good idea to mention the underlying technological enabler: “10 kg lighter, thanks to the exploitation of additive printing capabilities and the use of a new alloy”, “cybersecurity at the highest level thanks to an exclusive partnership with…”.

Once these four 4 floors have been built, the explanation around the product consists of going up and down from one level to the next, to highlight the consequences of the lower level on the upper one, or to justify the validity of the upper level by the lower level. This narrative work allows for a dynamic and flexible product pitch.

Young engineers and buyers who seek to expand their technical knowledge by reading your documentation will be grateful for years to come. By making your offer easy to remember, you silently structure their expectations.