In marketing, big ideas get the spotlight. Campaigns, taglines, film, media. But the smallest pieces of language, the ones buried in product pages or tucked into ecomm descriptions, are often doing the hardest work.
They’re where a brand gets specific. Where claims meet questions. Where customers decide whether to keep going or move on.
They also happen to be playing a bigger role in how products get found. Answer Engine Optimization, or AEO, is changing how content surfaces across search, marketplaces, and recommendation engines. It rewards clarity over cleverness. If someone searches for “moisturizer for sensitive skin,” the product that spells that out clearly, without spin, is the one that shows up.
That shift has raised the bar for product copy. The language needs to be structured, descriptive, and actually helpful. It needs to tell you who the product is for, what it does, and why it’s worth trusting, all without trying too hard.
This isn’t about word count. It’s about word choice. Not sounding bigger, just being clearer.
For communicators, it’s a reminder: product copy isn’t just housekeeping. It’s a strategic tool. One that plays a role in how customers find, understand, and decide. One that signals whether a brand has done its homework or is still relying on outdated language that says very little to anyone.
The most effective brands are rewriting quietly. No fanfare. Just sharper, smarter copy that meets people where they’re searching and gives them what they came for.
References
Chaffey, D., & Ellis-Chadwick, F. (2019). Digital marketing (7th ed.). Pearson Education.
Enge, E., Spencer, S., & Fishkin, R. (2015). The art of SEO: Mastering search engine optimization (3rd ed.). O’Reilly Media.
Fishkin, R. (2022). Lost and founder: A painfully honest field guide to the startup world. Penguin.
Nielsen Norman Group. (2020). Writing digital product copy. https://www.nngroup.com/articles/product-descriptions/
Sullivan, L. (2018). Hey Whipple, squeeze this: The classic guide to creating great ads (6th ed.). Wiley.