Write a good product description on the Microsoft Marketplace

You’re about to launch on Microsoft Marketplace ? Congrats !

But you’re already running in issue number 1 — you don’t know what to display in your product offering …

You’re at the right place. We’ll give you prescriptive guidance in this article and great examples. At the end you should be confident enough to structure your product description.

First of all there is some hard truth: we all tend to think we’re explicit. But we’re not…

When you’re the maker of your product, it’s easy for you to understand what it does and the value it provides. But what about your prospects ?

There’s no magic. The secret of a perfect description is a description that is going to be understood 100% by your audience. But also a convincing one.

We’re going to share the 6 focal points to make a great description.

And because we prefer to share more than less — point 7 is how we applied these advices for our very own listing.

‍

1. A CLEAR Value Proposition:

‍

I’ve got this weird passion. I go on landing pages & look for great examples.

Saying so, I love the Microsoft Power BI page. The value proposition is showcased within two lines

“Find clarity when you need it most. Empower team members to discover insights hidden in your data with Microsoft Power BI.”

The previous version of the landing page said:

“Bring your data to life. Power BI transforms your company’s data into rich visuals for you to collect and organize so you can focus on what matters to you”

It doesn’t resonate the same.

• Why should I care about bringing my data to life?
• How transforming data is going to help me focus on what matters to me ?
• Instead of telling me why I should be using the product. It’s telling what it was doing. And it wasn’t very convincing..

The new page is explicit. It has a “Why ?-How ? –What” format.

• Why should I care ?You need to find clarity in your business
• How am I going to find clarity ?By discovering insights hidden in you data
• With what am I supposed to do so ?Microsoft Power BI.

The “Why?-How?-What?” structure made it clear and grew my interest. You can replicate that structure for your description.

Credits: This structure was shared by Simon Sinek over a TED Talk.

‍

2. Am-I in paradise ?

‍

Remember, people going to our marketplaces are “in-market”. They’re searching for a software with a purchase intent.

Do you search for something when you don’t have a problem ? Do you look for a plumber when your sink is working just fine ?

Same applies to your audience. Most of them are not here by mistake. They have an active need. They want to ease their pain points.

The company PayFit understood it perfectly. Payfit promise is to make payroll as easy as 1,2,3.

On their website, you could find all pain points alleviators. They couldn’t be more clear:

“No more mistakes, delays and late penalties”

“Say goodbye to manual tasks, spreadsheets, and back and forth emails”

Although nobody is sure how the marketplace algorithm works. It’s obvious keywords are of importance.

These additions are awesome. Their audience can perfectly relate to that.It brings conversion.

Do the same job than PayFit.

‍

3. Beautiful. Tell me, what’s the ROI like?

‍

I know. This is a tough one. To be fair, it will likely vary for each customer. And it would be misleading to draw an average. I also face this problem.

But think as your customers. They will have to explain why they want your software. They’ll also have to report on a Return on Investment.

Bring the metric they need. A relevant metric is something that a customer can translate in turnover.

An average can make no sense. Neither a median. But still that your data can tell a story.

‍

4. Falling in love –killer app features

‍

There are products that you use because you need them. Others because you both love & need them.

The reason why people are falling in love with product is because they have a secret sauce. We want to know in your description what’s yours.

Tell me something about your product that makes me dream. Make sure that I know it’s there.

Think PowerPoint — for me creating presentations used to be boring.

Now you’ve got the AI assistant that shape your deck into a stunning looking presentation. You just need to write your content.

From there, PowerPoint take care of the rest. That’s the feature that makes me love using Power Point. For this feature, I’m unable to revert back to competitors solution. This is one example of secret sauce. What’s yours ? Tell us everything.

‍

5. Target your audience with keywords

‍

Think about it. Whenever we ideate –we type keywords in our browser.

To some extent the marketplace is acting as a search engine. Customers use it to browse solutions with … a search bar.

There are some easy ways to find the relevant keywords for your solution. One is to replicate what you have on your Google Analytics Console.

Google Analytics records & analyze traffic on a given website. Typically it offers metrics over five acquisition channel:

• Direct–The customer is directly typing your website address. For a Web Applications it is often your existing users.
• Search–It’s visitors that land on your website after querying some keywords through a search engine.
• Referrals–These are the websites that send traffic to your website. For instance, blogs often act as referrals for tech companies.
• Email–People that are coming on the website because they clicked on a link.
• Ads–running on a display or search network.

For a good keyword on Marketplace the most relevant is to look at the “Search” section.

This Search section displays an in-market audience somewhat similar to the one you have on the Marketplace. Therefore they should be using the keywords you want to re-use for your listing.

If I search for “law software” on Google, I will type the same keywords on AppSource.

Other & complementary approach is to use keyword tools. There are plenty of it. The most famous is: Google Keyword Planner. But my personal favorite is Ubersuggest. It’s free. It gives the indicators that you need.

I look at the volume of the keyword search per country & the difficulty of implementing such keywords based on competition.It also bring suggestions & what keywords competitors are using.

Using these two should help avoid a major drawback.

Want to play it safe & pick generic keywords? Guess what ? Everybody has the same idea.It results in high competition and low conversions.

Let’s take a fictive example:

I’m “RocketSchool” an ISV that offers Learning Management System for universities.

My original idea is no to miss out on potential users. I pick very generic keywords such as “learnings” and “students”.

When typing these keywords I have respectively 1000 & 319 applications offered in AppSource.

Being realistic, my potential prospect will have a look at the first 20 than drop out.

If I’m not among the top 20–I’m nowhere. It’s sad. I’m listed on an highly visited website (AppSource) but invisible.

However if I go a more specific, I have less competition. Let’s take the keywords “lms” (for Learning Management System) & “University”. For these there are only 93 & 73 applications offered.

It will be easier if I compete for these keywords.

Now where do you put these keywords ? Well — you have three areas to be playing with:
1. Your Offer Name;
2. Your Search Result Summary/Your Tagline
3. The Keywords box.
The three count for keyword ranking.

6. Leave your contact !

‍

Remember we’re in B2B ! Most of prospects won’t spend 50K just by seeing your listing. You got it: a negotiation talk is likely to happen.

And that’s why — it’s critical to leave contact details. It would be too idiot to drop the ball now..

Hive Streaming is doing it well. On their transact offers you have:

“If none of the published plan profiles fit your company’s needs, contact Hive for a private offer at appsource@hivestreaming.com”

A private offer is an offer that will only be visible to specific customers.It’s particularly convenient for discounts scenarios.

‍

7. Good examples

‍

WeTransact:

✅ Clear Value Proposition:

“Say goodbye to tedious listing processes and hello to cash !

Introducing WeTransact.io — the platform that makes listing on Microsoft Marketplace a piece of cake!”

✅ ROI displayed:

“Helps to quickly publish in days, not months”…”No tech team needed anymore”

✅ Targeted audience:

WeTransact, that’s us, realized the strong recognition of our competitor, Tackle. We decided there was no better audience to target than those searching for Tackle.

We used keywords like “Tackle” and “Tackle.io” to show up in search results when users looked for Tackle. Initially, when users typed “Tackle.io,” WeTransact appeared among the top results.

However, a disclaimer: we faced issues and got delisted for using our competitor’s keywords. So, we had to change our approach. We got creative and switched our tagline from “Say goodbye to tedious listing processes” to “Tackle your Marketplace journey with ease.” This resolved the issue, and our search results returned to their initial ranking.

Delisting reason:

‍

Azure Marketplace Keywords policy as 11th September 2023:

“Keywords must be relevant to the offer and any supported products. Adding competitor names or products as keywords is not permitted. Categories and titles should not be added as keywords.”

The moral of the story is to use competitor keywords carefully and be ready to adapt your strategy when needed.

Typing Tackle on Azure Marketplace:

‍

✅ Left contact

✅ Pain points identified “Say goodbye to tedious listing processes”

✅ Secret Sauce displayed in “Bonus”.

‍

Ready to publish? Discover how WeTransact can help you monetize on the Azure Marketplace in no time. Email us