Customer value is realized after purchase.
Used to be that those of us in “sales & marketing” had the mindset that once the sale was made, our jobs as marketing professionals was pretty much done.
We succeeded. We got the prospects attention. Intrigued him into considering us. Demonstrated our value to him. Then closed the sale. Let’s order some martinis!
Not so fast, Buckaroo. As anybody who has an expensive piece of workout equipment gathering dust in the basement will tell you, it’s one thing to buy something. It’s something else to extract full value from it. And unless our buyer gets his money’s worth out of it in the form of value, he’s never coming back for another purchase. (And he might tell any friends who are considering it to forget it.)
So what to do? Acknowledge that as marketers, our job isn’t finished when the check clears the bank or the customer loads our product into her car. We need to mindfully help her get the true value out of our offerings. Customer support. Product updates. Advertising. One-to-one communications. All of which support her purchase and help her feel part of the “family.”
Getting value out of our offerings is smart business in a lot of ways. For one, it makes it easy for our customer to justify the purchase. Our product did for him what he expected it to do (and hopefully more). It communicates that we care about our customers and are looking out for them. It elevates our offerings over others in the category. It makes our customers more likely to come back to us in the future. It might even make them (dare we say) more loyal about our products and our company. It will give them a good story to tell others when the subject of your products comes up in conversation.
And compared to the cost of attracting new customers, it costs peanuts.
A customer who uses your product or service a lot is worth way more than one who has paid for it but lapsed or is a casual user. Marketers that realize that—and act on that—are quite a ways down the road to creating a customer for life.
Posted by Mickey
Similar Posts:
- Leveling the Marketing Balance of Power.
- Are you adding value or just adding chrome?
- YOUR CUSTOMERS DON’T CARE.
- Telling vs. trying.
- What’s next?
If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!
Recent Comments