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How to Write a Great Product Review in 6 Steps

Content marketing continues to be one of the most lucrative methods of affiliate marketing. However, getting started with your product reviews and other generic articles can be daunting, particularly if you have little writing experience. Arm yourself with this step-by-step guide to writing a great product review and watch your conversions soar!

Step 1 – Choose Your Product

The first step when creating a product review is to choose a niche in which you are interested. If you’re bored writing it, chances are people will be bored reading it! By selecting a product in which you have a genuine interest you will find research less demanding and writing more engaging.

Step 2 – Research & More Research

Getting to know the product could be the difference between making a sale and not. Make use of all information available to you whether from the merchant’s site, the affiliate network or other sources online and offline.

It’s not only the product you need to know; you should also be familiar with your target audience. If you have chosen a niche which interests you as recommended above, you will already have an idea who your content should be targeted at. Search for terms for which your audience themselves would search, and read through the highest-ranking pages. This will give you an idea of an appropriate tone for your product review and may even inspire additional content.

Step 3 – Plan It

Now you know your product and your audience, you need to consider the key points your product review needs to include. Use your knowledge of your audience to consider all of the questions and queries they are likely to have about the product, you need to make sure that you provide answers to all of these to diminish the need for the reader to look elsewhere.

Once you have identified them, lay out your key points into a rough plan. You can simply bullet point what you want to include in order. Doing this will help you to stay on track, keeping your product review concise and relevant.

Step 4 – Write It

If you remember one thing when writing your product review, remember Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA):

  • Attract your visitor’s attention with a compelling title. You could ask a question, offer the solution to a problem or state a benefit. Just be sure to keep it fairly short and clear.
  • Maintain their interest with relevant and intriguing information about the product you are promoting. Include how it will solve the problem your target audience possesses.  
  • Create a desire for the product with additional benefits. Be sure to provide proof to back-up these claims, for example you could include customer testimonials, information about clinical studies and explanations of how the product works.
  • You now need to encourage your reader to take action. You should therefore include a Call To Action (CTA) at the bottom of your article. This will usually be a short instruction to the reader advising how to buy. Hyperlink this text with your affiliate link. MoreNiche also has a variety of CTA graphics for affiliate use. These should be used in addition to text links rather than instead of.

Your copy should be written for the skim-reader as this is how most people consume text online. You can partly do this through page formatting (see Step 6) but there are things you can do when writing too. For example, keep your paragraphs short, usually no more than 4 lines, and make use of sub-headings so the content your reader is looking for can be found easily.

Be sure to include the keywords you are targeting but don’t stuff! These keywords should fit fluidly within your text. If you find that you are having to force them in then there’s something wrong.

Whilst writing you should keep your audience in mind and ensure to adjust the tone of the text accordingly. Write to one person like it is a conversation. Don’t try to force in complex language, and unnecessary jargon. This approach sounds much more honest and thus is more persuasive. Writing in this style should include the regular use of the words ‘you’ and ‘your’.

You’re probably going to have more success if you stick to a soft sell approach throughout your article. Leave the hard sell to the merchant site. Your visitor is reading your product review because they are already interested, you just need to give them the information they need to make the decision to buy.

Step 5 – Read It!

This step is so often missed off the end of the article-writing process. You must proofread your full article. Remember, a spelling and grammar check in Word does not equate to proofreading! You are looking for much more than spelling and grammar errors, you should also be considering the structure of your sentences and of the article in full. A useful tip is to print your product review on paper to proofread it. You’ll be surprised how many more mistakes stand out on paper rather than on screen!

If you don’t feel one hundred percent confident proofreading your own copy you could pay someone else to help. This doesn’t have to cost the earth, you can choose a figure which suits your budget with freelance sites like elance.com and odesk.com.

Step 6 – Publish It

Now you have copy which will convert, you need to format it on the page in a way which makes it look both attractive and easy to read.

Keep in mind again that you are publishing this for skim readers. You therefore need to make your key points stand out to ensure that they are not lost and missed by the reader. Use bold text or another colour to do this. Your reader can then see these points at a glance and be encouraged to read further. Don’t overdo it though, or they could get lost within all the other bold and coloured text thus defeating the object.

For larger sections of text which you deem to be more important, you can use boxes and background colours. This will draw the reader’s attention to whole segments of the article.

Use images, videos, tables and diagrams to reinforce your claims. These will also make the page look more attractive and thus people will be more likely to stay and read. Despite the saying ‘you should never judge a book by its cover’, let’s be honest, people do!

Your most valuable space for content is above the fold. This is the section which can be seen before scrolling down. There are a few things which you should always try to include in this space:

  • The first of these, for obvious reasons, is a product image.
  • At least one benefit of the product should be present and apparent. This should be easy if you have written your article with AIDA in mind.
  • Ideally after the benefit(s) you will include a clear CTA link to the merchant’s website – just in case your reader’s mind is already made up.

Links should be present throughout the page but not too often that it looks ‘spammy’. Start by incorporating them throughout so that one is always visible at which ever point on the page you have scrolled.

Now you have published a product review which will convert, it’s time to make sure that people will see it. But that’s another article for another time!

For a more in depth guide to creating quality content which converts, read through the MoreNiche Conversion Rate Bible. Or for advice and feedback about your articles contact your MoreNiche affiliate mentor today.

3 replies on “How to Write a Great Product Review in 6 Steps”

Thanks for your feedback Bhawna! I’m happy to hear that it’s helped. Feel free to contact me if you would like any further help with your affiliate marketing career 🙂

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