Maximize Brand Content for Valuable Customer Connections

 

Brands pride themselves on having a great product, and they want their customers to know it too. Half the battle, as we know, is convincing customers that they need the product. But when your potential customer agrees and makes the purchase, you need to maintain that connection and support all the features that made the product so compelling during the sale.

 

What’s the first step?

 

While you may have created a myriad of content for your product – from start-up guides to user manuals, “How To” blog posts, YouTube tutorials and more – there is no one clear channel to receive and provide information on your product once it is in your customer’s hands. No well-oiled machine exists to power this information directly to your customer when they need it or before an actual issue arises.

 

In short, the product information base is siloed. While you may strive to create a streamlined after-sale customer experience so there’s no wild goose chase to find the information they’re looking for, you don’t yet have an engine to do so.

 

Furthermore, product manuals are going digital, adding a whole new complexity for consumers to find what they need in a 100+ page digital file embedded deep within your website. Not to mention, with people spending more time in apps and social channels, product tutorials, blog posts, and other product content tend to live online across a multitude of platforms. Finding this information creates yet an added barrier to connect your customers back to your brand.

 

 

Gone are the days when a product is unboxed and the brand-customer connection is complete.

 

In a recent post, we talked about the five stages of the product lifecycle: unboxing, onboarding, enjoying, sharing, and caring/maintaining. A customer has unique experiences during each of these stages—presenting opportunities for brands to capitalize on these after-sale experiences through the product itself. You already know the exact actions you want your customers to take once the product is unboxed, but you may not have the tools to share the information with the customer exactly when they need it.

 

For example, during that onboarding phase, your customers are in the “getting to know you” stage of the product lifecycle. Your customers are actively engaged to learn more about their new product—researching how to use it and how to take care of it. At this point, your customers are on your website, scrolling through your social media channels, or flipping through an owner’s manual to gather the information they need. Your customer is in control of the information they are consuming.

 

However, there’s an information chasm between the product features customers want to know about and the product marketing that you’ve worked so hard on. Now that the product is in the customer’s hands, you don't have a platform to feed the information to the customer when they need it; you can only hope the customer takes it upon themselves to seek out this information for a better product experience.

 

 

Since the actual product is the connection between your brand and your customers, they shouldn’t be expected to do all the work just to ‘find what they need from their favorite brand’.

 

Products have the transmission power to become complex systems that combine sensors, data storage, and connectivity in several ways. When brands consider this information for after-sale customer engagement, the question becomes, how can we continue to help the customer have a better experience?

 

There should be a two-way engagement channel where you send the right information to your customers at exactly the right time. You already have the content at your disposal, now is the time to connect your customers to your content through personalized product touchpoints.

 

With product touchpoints, you can send the customer the right content or engagement at the right time. With the content already at your fingertips, you can create touchpoints at each stage of the product lifecycle that can drive additional engagement with the product owner and the product.

 

Consumers want brands to facilitate a high-value after-sale connection—one that provides the right information at exactly the right time, establishing meaningful relationships. The only way for a business to survive in the new digital space is to keep its customers close, engaged continuously through contextual communication on what products need.