Your passion has inspired you to create a unique product, but you've struggled to sell online. E-commerce requires the mastery of unfamiliar technologies. Customer feedback is incomplete and indirect. Furthermore, you hadn't anticipated that you would have to become a multimedia publisher. Digital marketing gurus preach the gospel of customer engagement, but how?

READ ABOUT PRIORITIZING YOUR DIGITAL MARKETING EFFORTS

Product Descriptions are Fundamental

Too often, we don't give our product descriptions the attention they deserve. After all, if a visitor to your site takes the time to read a product description, she's clearly interested. It's your time to shine. A compelling product description can build engagement, differentiate your offering, and build trust. Easier said than done, but the effort is worthwhile. Well-crafted product descriptions represent a real point of leverage.

Elements of a Story

My business partner, Laura Black, started her career as a writer and editor for an award-winning travel magazine. Later, as a consultant and college professor, much of her work involved telling complex stories in engaging ways. After all, if people aren't engaged, they won't pay attention to what you have to say. I spoke with Laura recently about the elements of authentic storytelling.

Laura explains that stories contain these elements:

* Characters

* Challenges

* Transformation

The stories of your business and products, too, have characters who face a challenge. The customer is always the main character. They face a challenge: the gap between their current state and their desired state. Through the purchase and use of your product, they can experience transformation and overcome their challenge.

For example, consider the LOFTi, a modern take on a timeless laundry drying rack design:

The LOFTi by The New Clothesline Company

The customer-character in this story needs to dry her laundry and wishes to do so in an environmentally friendly way. However, they don't have a lot of space to devote to a clothesline. Buying and using a LOFTi allows a customer to overcome the basic challenge of drying clothes in a way that stylishly communicates her value of environmental responsibility.

Authentic Storytelling Means Revealing Values

Identifying a customer challenge and describing your product as a solution seems like basic marketing. It is. That said, the marketing challenge for makers of unique consumer products sold online requires us to demonstrate our real, valid, and true empathy with our would-be customers. To do so, we must share evidence of the values that drive our decisions about design, materials, and sourcing.

Laura presents the case of Penzeys, which sells spices:

Penzeys Bay Leaf Whole

Consider the way Penzeys describes bay leaves:

Turkish bay leaves are the best in the world. Though not as strong as the California variety, they have a natural depth of flavor that the California bay leaves can't hope to match. Bay leaves grow wild on the hilly mountains of western Turkey in the area around Izmir (Smyrna).

In a very concise way, Penzeys communicates the care they take in selecting spices. That's a value a potential buyer can share and can be the basis for a meaningful connection with the product.

The Customer Need Not Be the Only Character in Your Story