Every day, browsing through WWW analytics, CRM data or market research we seek to learn what our do our clients really want? Though, clients tell or want to tell us what they need. The company often lacks an idea or a tool to hear them out. So how to understand the needs of current and potential clients, in order to create relevant content for them?
Since most of commerce has become e-commerce the problem of communication between consumer and company appeared. The situation looks as if there’s a baby (client), who’s trying to say what he wants but cannot speak yet. On the other hand, there’s a company which, in theory, listens and looks but can’t understand. There’s simply no common communication platform between them. Therefore, often when trying to provide appropriate content to the customer, we get to the point we don’t know what to write. Strange, isn’t it? They don’t know their own business, they don’t know what clients ask about or what their major problems are? After all, these are best possible ideas to generate valuable, interesting and relevant content for our clients.
Even if we are able to answer those questions we may reach the point when:
– we recounted areas we are familiar with and we begin to refresh existing content
– we face such number of issues we don’t know what to opt for
Looking over various advice concerning content creating and distribution, we encounter two approaches. The first says it’s worth to refresh and update existing materials. The other one says since something has been composed clients could be interested and either have already read it or they may still get to this. Thus, writing the same again means we don’t deliver them anything useful. Where to search for ideas? It’s worth to forget you mastermind for a while and seek for inspiration somewhere else. There’s plenty of resource rich in interesting topics. Below’s the list of three it’s worth to take advantage of.
1. Consumers – ask them!
Sometimes simple solutions are most effective, so instead of spending time browsing through www analytics, CRM data or market research, we may simply ask our clients directly what they are interested in. It’s good idea to select most active and engaged clients and enquire such group if they would like to learn more. This could be some functionality of our product, its characteristics or set of ideas for its implementation. Not only such attitude serves greater client education but help gain client loyalty too, as consumers feel important for the company.
2. The consumers – see what they read and draw conclusions
Good Marketing Automation system allow to relate information about what article particular client read, what materials he downloaded from the website with whether and when he made a purchase. Thus, we see what content is interesting for those who make purchase with us and what content helps to sell. In an ideal situation, we’ll see some kind of journey through content, which started the moment contact was acquired and finished in the moment the purchase was made.
Surely, to find out such behavior, the content itself must be well-developed and accessible in order to lead client to purchase in a logic way.
3. Sales people – find out what they talk to client about
Even it may seem hard sometime, the cooperation of sales and marketing departments is essential. Yet, it’s the sales that mainly benefits from marketing work and sales should be interested in best marketing process. The bigger and bigger part of sales process is in marketing department hands and solely closing the deal is serviced by sales department. Even though, the sales people are closest to the client and they know best why client makes purchase, what he asks about and what he does not understand. Once we learn this, we can answer most questions through marketing and we’ll begin to deliver sales better quality contacts. There are two easy methods to start such collaboration:
– we may systematically ask questions like: is there any material you regularly refer clients in the sales process?
– we may ask sales persons to ask clients what they lack before purchase or what information would make the process go better
To sum up
All above mentioned methods are driven with the same attitude. As marketers, we need to make every effort that the content provided by us were valuable, helpful and interesting for the recipients. Effective education of our potential clients is our duty in respect to the company and sales process. Nowadays, it’s the content that sales and creating valuable and coherent content results in higher revenues and lower sales costs.
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