Do your potential customers often struggle to get to grips with the technical aspects of your products? Leaving you with the challenge of how to convey product knowledge in a compelling way..
One of the major sales barriers for engineering products is their prospect customer’s lack of in-depth knowledge of how the products work.
Creating valuable product information content, as part of your marketing strategy, can improve your offering in a way that will boost not only customer satisfaction, but your bottom line as well.
Why understanding sells
You may have developed a better performing product, your engineers know the product inside out and they’ve optimized it perfectly.
However, your customers do not know the product like your engineers do. Even if they happen to be engineers in the same field, it’s unlikely that they will understand your product without some form of guidance.
Without this understanding, you’re peddling a magic bullet. In a highly competitive market, lack of understanding amongst potential customers coupled with baseless claims can lead to skepticism, and skepticism does not sell.
The Inbound Marketing Approach
This is where inbound marketing will help you shine. Engineering often involves complicated ideas and heavy jargon. Using a content led-strategy, you can teach your audience complicated concepts and use this content to guide them through the buying process.
However, creating and putting content out there alone will not effectively increase product knowledge and lead to sales. To help your business to really connect with their audience, the key is to use content as part of your overall inbound marketing strategy.
Whilst there is no ‘one right approach’ to carrying out a content led inbound marketing approach, some of the best practices that you should follow are:
Know your audience, develop buyer personas and use them to shape your content.
SEO optimize your content. Make it easy for your potential audience to increase their understanding.
Use a call-to-action to provide downloadable content that can directly solve customer problems and further aid understanding.
Nurture your leads. Use this as an opportunity to aid understanding of the more technical aspects of your product.
Going the extra mile to help customers understand your product will yield massive returns and help you stand out in your industry.
What you can do to build understanding
Now that you’re sold on the idea of providing value your potential customers to stand out from the crowd, how can you help potential customers to understand your product without being overly promotional?
Some of the types of content you could create include:
Blogs
Videos
Webinars
Ebooks/whitepapers
The approach to solving the issue of how to improve product knowledge can vary depending on what stage your potential customer is at. If they are at the awareness stage your approach to building understanding will be different to how you would approach a lead much further down the sales funnel.
In the early stages?
At this point, a potential customer is likely to be looking for an answer to more general questions and this is golden opportunity to guide them in your direction. It’s also worth bearing in mind the varying degrees of technical knowledge your potential customers may have, tailoring your approach and making complex engineering concepts simple is key. When addressing the question of how to improve product knowledge, you can solve this issue by creating content that:
Addresses industry trends
Provides solutions to common challenges your target audience encounters
Presents a ‘how to’
Explains the features of new and fascinating technologies across your industry
This is the stage where you want to show that you are trustworthy and knowledgeable, so create your content frequently and make sure you are up to date on the latest engineering trends and news.
Further down the sales funnel?
Engineering sales cycles are often a long process and information at the consideration stage highly influences the decision to purchase.
Customers buy things that fulfill a need or desire. If you can’t demonstrate how your product’s advantages translate into savings, or better quality images, or an experience they’ll enjoy, then they won’t buy it.
The more information you can give your customers during these stages of purchasing, the better. To create this level of understanding some examples of content you could create include:
Case studies
Detailed data sheets
Quick comparison charts or extra data when choosing a product
Product demonstrations videos
As a rule, there should be a full explanation to aid the acceptance of the product, understanding of how it works and how the product solves the problem that the customer has. Even if it does claim to solve their problems, customers – especially discerning, well-informed engineering ones – want at least a big picture understanding of how.
Once they’ve decided to buy from you, ensure you provide as much information as possible on how to use their purchase. Are there hidden or obscure features some users might not notice?
The more value they can get out of your product, the more likely they are to buy again.
Conclusion
In conclusion, going the extra mile to help customers understand your product has many advantages. Creating content that helps potential customers to understand your product properly, and answers important questions at each stage of the buyer’s journey, means they will make decisions they’re comfortable with, have a more fulfilling experience, and trust your brand. However, when producing your content, it is essential that you consider how your approach fits in with your wider inbound marketing strategy and follows best practice, doing this will help you get the most from your approach.
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