Back in the good old days when we wanted to buy something most of us went to a few stores, asked for recommendations, maybe exchanged some opinions with other buyers and friends and based on that information we made a purchase. Today, many of us make the purchase from their homes. For many products, you don’t even need to physically go to a store in order to buy them and you don’t rely so much on store clerks’ opinions because you have so much info online that often you are better expert for products you use than clerks. Moreover, nowadays your customers are mostly exposed to e-commerce – something that is not as easy as face –to – face recommendations.
Things have changed… What to do? KISSmetrics published a great post, “Are You Teaching Your Customers… Pssst Your Competitors Are!”, on this topic, saying that one of the best ways to teach your customers to buy your product is teaching them how to use it. The more they know about the product, the way it can be used, and the benefits they can have out of it, the more likely they will think about making an actual purchase. Thus, before you advertise your product with all those cool features that you believe will convince your customers to buy from you, make sure your customers understand what you actually advertise. Let’s see 3 tips on how to teach your customers before you manage to sell them anything.
1. Videos: what is the best way to visually show to your customers what are you selling, how the product can be used, and why is it good for them? – A video. Make sure you provide short but effective videos on your website. Do not forget that the main point of this video is not to show all of the cool features you offer in some techie language style. The main point is your average user to understand and accept your message. Checkthis link to see the way Blue Nile is educating before selling diamonds and check this link to watch MailChimp’s series of “Academy Videos” about email marketing.
2. Blogs: Blogs are important not just because they contribute to your SEO strategy but they also serve as great learning tools that help your customers better understand what you sell. Writing articles on specific topics related to the usage of your product and the benefits customers get out of it is a great approach to teach them before you sell to them. Moreover try to spread your tips on various social platforms. This will encourage them to look for your latest offering.
Follow this link to see how Conversion Voodoo is doing a great job in teaching companies about increasing conversions through a detailed article.
3. Q & A forum: having a website section where users can ask and get answers to questions related to your product is a great approach in educating your customers. Moreover if you manage to get great experts from your field to share content and answer questions on your website than this is even better. But in order to manage this, you need to provide high quality and valuable content. Great bloggers and experts want to be seen among other great bloggers and experts. Thus, it should be one step at a time. First provide great content and support to the same, and then you can search for experts who would like to get engaged and contribute to your website.
Follow this link to check SEOmoz (company developing SEO software, providing robust link intelligence API, and hosting web’s most vibrant SEO community) Q&A forum.
Read thefull KISSmetrics blog post to learn about more examples of companies who invest a lot of efforts in educating their customers before they sell anything to them.
To sum up, invest some time in understanding your customers: what they know, the way they want to learn about new things, and the channels they use when learning new stuff. Once you get this information, try to apply the presented tips and examples on your situation. But remember, consistency and active support is a must if you want to establish a long term relationship with your customers. Do your homework before your competitors do and do not forget: Teach first, sell second!