Sharon Burton presents the live Web seminar Social Media and Tech Pubs on Tuesday, 2 April, from 10:00-11:00 AM EDT (GMT-4). Below she provides a guest blog post providing a bit more insight into the topic.
Businesses must be concerned about the entire sales cycle. Much research has been focused on the presales cycle—what makes a consumer purchase one product over another. I’m interested in the post-sales cycle and how and what makes customers happy as they use our products.
Content matters in the Use part of the sales cycle because it supports the customers as they work through using the product. The day-to-day use feeds into perceived value of the product, suitability of the product, and perceived ease-of-use of the product. These issues feed back into future sales.
Additionally, common sense tells us people like working with companies they like. Part of being liked as a company is making the customer feel important, by having customer empathy and concern about their issues. With the dramatic changes to the marketing world from social media, we have new ways to connect with our customers and make them feel important.
Best of breed companies make their customers feel important and these customers are engaged with your brand. Engaged customers are your best source of future revenue (http://businessjournal.gallup.com/content/118339/b2b-customers-feelings.aspx).
“Fully engaged customers deliver a 23% premium over average customers in share of wallet, profitability, revenue, and relationship growth, while actively disengaged customers represent a 13% discount on the same measures, according to Gallup research.”
But what does fully engaged mean, from a customer's point of view? How do we make customers feel important so they want to be fully engaged? We can do this with the after-purchase attention we give to our customers. Effective and useful post sales content is one of those ways.