Are you writing a product description or are you writing something that is specifically
meant to generate a lot of interest on a product and get that product to sell well?
Catalog printing is not something completely removed from the world of advertising. There are a lot of similarities that you can find among the different forms of marketing, so why am I picking up so many obviously written by people who do not realize any of this?
How do I know? I read through these product descriptions that I suppose do describe the product, but they do it without any hint of emotion or feeling for the product itself. I sense no excitement or interest in the words and how they are phrased. Let me ask, if the person writing the material is not interested than why exactly am I supposed to be when reading it?
That is the question you need to be aware of and that you need to be able to answer. Let us compare catalog printing to postcards here, because I think a strong comparison can be drawn.
What is a postcard supposed to do? It needs to grab a persons attention quickly and gets a brief piece of information to them right away. Companies accomplish this by adding a lot of emotion and a lot of energy into their postcards. They make sure that they have colorful and interesting images, and that the writing is as direct as possible yet still imbued with a natural sense of interest and excitement.
The amount of writing you will do for a postcard is probably going to be about the same as the amount you will need for each product in your catalogs, which is why this stacks up so well when the comparison is made.
Why are catalogs oftentimes viewed differently? I am guessing that the reason has to do with postcards being a single entity all on their own. Your success will be entirely dictated by how much people like that one product featured in a postcard they are looking at. A catalog is instead comprised of several different parts. This is not a single product description that you are writing but perhaps fifty or more of them.
Each description is therefore given less weight and given less attention when writing. This would not help you sell any type of product. What you need to do is realize that in order for you to get lots of people become really excited over your products, each description has to be written as if that product were the only product you are promoting and selling.
You need to start going into your writing with this kind of mindset. Never think about the catalog as a whole when writing the descriptions, but instead take each one on their own and do your best to make that particular description as powerful as it can be. If you can do that than you will start to generate a lot more interest in your products and your advertising tool.