What Makes Good Product Spec Sheets?
When your team works as hard as it does to create innovative and inspiring product designs, you owe your prospective buyers a product spec sheet that satisfies their curiosity and settles the skeptics. Read on to learn the five critical factors to make good product spec sheets.
1. Relevance to a Specific Segment
The first step in creating a targeted data sheet is, of course, to know your personas inside and out. Hubspot provides a useful buyer persona template to get you digging deeper into the organizations, industries, and people who are buying your product.
Once you’ve established the segment you want to target with your product spec sheet, keep in mind marketing and SEO best-practices:
- Address the persona’s pain points and main problems
- Present your product as the solution to the pain points
- Integrate keywords to reach your target audience
Keep your product spec sheets targeted to move prospects along the sales funnel with precision and speed.
2. Focus on the Important Points
Even if they have brand loyalty, your consumers want to see options within your product lineup. Your product spec sheet is one of at least a few your prospective buyers will be glancing at. Put the important points in focus.
A few pro-tips to make your product sheets focused include:
- Use bullets and keep designs simple
- Keep your product sheets meticulously consistent across a product range
- Create copy with simple language and supporting data
👉 this article for more tips for effective data sheets. Vibrant and eye-catching designs are great, while at-a-glance product information is best.
3. Updated and Correct Information
Nothing causes business reputations to plummet like promulgating incorrect information on a product spec sheet.
Keep your product spec sheets up to date with a systematic integration of all your product sheets so that each update is consistent throughout your products. Avoid these commonly overlooked details on a product spec sheet:
- Missing dimensions, data, and other critical information: You’d be surprised at the frequency of some errors and omissions in product spec sheets
- Company logos and branding: Acquisitions requiring a new logo, branding overhauls with different color schemes, and other background details mismatched page to page will not escape the discerning buyer
- Copyrights and product versions: Keep the dates on these current to convey relevance
Maintain your credibility by keeping your branding consistent and your product information as cutting edge as your products.
4. Clear Call to Action
A Call to Action is a no-brainer for a CMO, but creating a CTA on a product spec sheet is its own animal. Your potential buyer or technical reader already has a problem (hence reading your product spec sheet), so you simply need to create a sense of urgency, and then give them specific steps to follow through.
3 things great CTAs do on a product spec sheet:
1. Create a sense of urgency: For instance, an electronics manufacturer targeting a corporate buyer might say of their product:
Create a seamless integration with your existing IoT devices today.
This sentence connects with the buyer, building upon long-held frustrations with their current systems insufficiencies and associated productivity losses. They will want your product even sooner.
2. Give clear, simple steps to follow as short commands in the present tense (Call us now, Click here, Talk to an expert today)
3. Entice conversions through a CTA button: According to CrazyEgg, “buttons are what make people click and conversions happen” — enough said!
Keep these three elements in mind for a CTA that can be easily integrated into your product spec sheets.
5. Conveys Expertise
Just as you target a specific segment, a good product spec sheet will dig a little deeper into an area of expertise. You will prove that you are a credible resource and may just hit a nerve (in the right way) that makes a buyer think about your product while executing their daily functions.
Strategically use graphics like engineering specs, data on performance, and product usage charts for various applications (i.e. a metal cutting wheel that works best with steel, but not aluminum) to empirically demonstrate your product’s excellence.
Give expert advice paired with data and your buyers will see your product as top of the line.
A product spec sheet is as good as its execution. Follow these guidelines to create excellent product spec sheets across the board.
Sign up for a free trial with TDSmaker to make your product spec sheets great today.
Originally published at blog.tdsmaker.com.
