Introduction In this article, you will learn how to utilize information and knowledge about your products to ensure that you are supporting the sales process for on-line or off-line products.
This article will concentrate on the use of social media marketing and provide specific tactics that you can use to greatly increase your customers' knowledge of your products.
Throughout recent decades, most of our marketing effort has been in providing people the knowledge to purchase products.
We would like to think that simply telling people all the details of the product will certainly make them buy.
Not always.
As marketing people, we often lean towards educating our customers, even when at any one point, giving them education to purchase or our products is not the best way to proceed.
Nonetheless, after customers become aware of you, your products and your brand, it is time to make sure they possess sufficient understanding of your product.
You may ask, what do I need to say to my customers to give them only the knowledge they need? The answer is, you need to have mirrored their problems/interests and their objections, instinctively.
You need to show them materially how they will be better off after they transact with you.
If that means cost savings, superior knowledge, or increase income, then you need to describe and quantify it, if possible.
Marketing Tactics 1.
Blogging/Website Educating your customers does not mean putting them to sleep with paragraphs and paragraphs of technical detail.
On the top level of your website, should be a clear correspondence between their problems, the answer to the problem and your product's answer to the problem.
If you must go into detail, leave that for a lower level linked page.
New startup technology companies often make the mistake of turning the sales process (and consequently the website) into a technical data sheet.
Resist the temptation to get into detail too early, unless you have the need for this level of information.
2.
Micro-blogging As soon as you have established (or are establishing) a following in discussions, groups, and blogs, it is very worthwhile for you to establish a following on Twitter.
Twitter, is a new communication medium that allows you to stay in touch by providing frequent mini-content to them in 140 characters.
If you want to pass along web addresses to them, Twitter allows you shorten the URL, so that you can also write several words of comments to deliver the right message.
Take a look at how Whole Foods uses Twitter to maintain responsive information to and from their customers about their products and service .
3.
On-line Video, Audio and Pictures Consider seriously utilizing video, audio and pictures in your outbound marketing.
The more public this information, the better.
Putting audio, video and pictures on your site is also high impact.
There is nothing that aids understanding better, than seeing pictures and images and then to be able to listen them (or both).
The most popular options are You Tube, Flickr, and Seesmic.
Take a look at how Home Depot has utilized You Tube to maintain the usual orange and do it yourself image that many have come to rely upon.
Using Podcast downloads from your website and the ability to comment on them, are a great way for people to easily listen to a clear explanation and to allow them to say a few words.
Remember just like a salesman, you want customer engagement everywhere possible.
4.
Content Aggregation When you are providing education, it is very important to appear to be as impartial as possible.
Aggregating articles, videos, blogs, and other web content into one place for visitors, does two things: 1) It keeps them from leaving your site, and therefore you keep them in your sales net and 2) It provides them a valuable service not having to do the leg work themselves.
EMC has paved the way in utilizing Friend Feed to direct information to customers.
Using a RSS feed, EMC provides a single channel of the news that they want their customers to hear.
It allows for EMC to comment as necessary on every piece of news.
Friend Feed is a dramatically different way of focusing content to your stakeholders (customers, investors, supplier, you name it).
5.
Wiki's For industries and markets (such as medical or bio-tech companies) in which there is a heavy information load, a wiki is a way of doing two things: 1) engaging the users in building the content of the vast information allowed, and 2) keeping customers heavily tied into the learning needed to buy their products.
What is a wiki? It is a user (visitor) built body of information that becomes available to all users and visitors.
I would recommend that this may be more appropriate for high technology companies that already have a large following.
However, it may be very good for markets where buyers are very vocal and willing to demonstrate their knowledge in public.
Inbound Marketing What is inbound marketing? It is the information that you get as a result of two way communications within Web 2.
0 technology.
In this phase of the sales cycle, the knowledge stage provides great input to the generation of product ideas, product development process and enhancements.
All of these need to be prioritized, requirements created, timing planned, and new markets identified.
You will need to carefully capture the input and feed it back into the system in some systematic way.
This effort is basically allowing the customers to tell you what they want so that you are simply left with the decision to plan products.
Measuring Market Knowledge The goal is to have your audience understand intellectually the benefits, product and features as they relate to their interest.
This is a fact finding mission on the part of your customers and you are reaching out to them to tell them about it.
Measuring how well you are doing that will be in terms of how much engagement do you have with customers.
Are they asking questions, are they subscribing to your newsletter or freebies, are they coming to your website? In Summary Do not go overboard in emphasizing this step at the expense of other stages in the sales cycle of your products to your markets.
It is as important as every other stage and should be used in proportionate measure.
Sufficient information is the goal at this point.
Listen to the return communication channel to determine whether they have the right amount of information.
Adjust it as necessary, but do not overload them.
It could slow them and consequently, slow you down.
Remember, quick to market with product, means quick and appropriate information, so that you make sales now.
Have fun.