|
Buyers these days are buried in choices. A typical Google
search generates millions of options. A harried grocery shopper
looking for canned peaches, confronts dozens of choices. What’s
a buyer to do? More to the point, what’s a marketer
to do?
With overstressed buyers facing a sea of information, marketers
are now starting to realize that providing more information
isn’t the answer. Instead, more and more business owners
are positioning their companies as concierge marketers.
Take a tip from the concierge
Most of us are familiar with hotel concierges; the helpful
souls who are stationed just inside a hotel’s front
door. They are there to answer guests’ questions about
restaurants, shows or other local happenings. Their years
of accumulated experience help guests cut through mounds of
information and save valuable time and money.
A concierge can recommend the best restaurants because he’s
been asked that question a hundred times before. So the hotel,
as an added-value feature, offers the concierge’s services
to its guests. Some concierges are so good they end up being
a point of difference for the hotel versus its competition.
It’s this experience and a company’s willingness
to share it that is the cornerstone of concierge marketing.
What is a concierge marketer?
At the heart of it, a concierge marketer tries to simplify
a buyer’s life. The concierge marketer offers a buyer
helpful tips, tools and knowledge so the buyer can navigate
through the mounds of available information and get straight
to the point of making a knowledgeable decision. The best
concierge marketer puts enough valuable tools in place so
that the company positions itself as a wise and worldly counselor.
Some common tools
The first set of tools to consider as a concierge marketer
are passive tools. These usually take the form of printed
or online informational products. Using any of these, buyers
can quickly get answers to their most nagging questions. These
passive tools include:
- Tip sheets
- Booklets/pamphlets
- Free downloads
- Special Reports or White papers
- Checklists
- Buying guides
- Frequently Asked Question (FAQ’s) sections
One company’s website, the Original Mattress Factory
www.originalmattress.com , offers several helpful tools including
a guide to sleeping mattress dimensions and a tips section
that help a buyer choose the right sized mattress. At my website,
www.emergemarketing.com, I offer a “Marketing Lingo”
section with over 200 common marketing terms and their definitions.
Interactive tools
But good concierge marketers don’t just offer these
passive tools and call it a day. Instead, they give more.
They offer interactive tools on top of these, to create dialogues
with buyers. Examples of interactive tools are:
- Post-installation follow-up calls
- Customer clubs
- Company sponsored chat rooms
- Web-based surveys
- 1-on-1 customer interviews
One of my favorite interactive tools is Amazon.com’s
“Wish List” program. While at the Amazon site,
I can develop my very own “Wish List” of books,
and then email it to my family members. Using this tool, my
family knows what to get me for Christmas without having to
ask, I get the Christmas presents I want, and Amazon gets
the sales because they brokered this interactive transaction.
Everybody saves time.
As you move towards using interactive vehicles, remember
this: the best interactive marketing vehicles for your company
are actual humans—your service reps. Great customer
service reps, order takers or delivery personnel notice immediately
when there is a void between a company’s product and
the buyer’s experience with it, and work hard to fill
it.
Next steps for concierge marketers
If you’d like to become a concierge marketer, first
identify the most common information voids your buyers face.
Ask yourself these questions:
- During which stage in the buying cycle are our buyers
confused?
- What information do they lack?
- What customer questions does our service staff repeatedly
field?
After you identify and prioritize the answers to these questions,
you can then start designing tools to address the highest
priority ones. Say for example, your buyers are confused about
which elements of your service are outsourced and which are
performed in-house. The concierge marketer might then develop
an ad slick or PowerPoint slide that clearly identifies outsourced
activities versus ones that are performed by your company.
Remember…
Today, we’re living in an ever-expanding universe of
information. And it will only continue to grow. As a marketer,
you can turn buyers your way if you alter your approach slightly.
Act as their concierge and doors will open for you.
Author Bio
Jay Lipe, aka the “Plan Man”, is the CEO of
Emerge
Marketing; a firm that helps growing companies improve
their marketing. He is the author of the book The
Marketing Toolkit for Growing Businesses (Chammerson
Press) which is available at major bookstores and online
at www.amazon.com.
He is also a sought after speaker and seminar leader, and
can be reached at (612) 824-4833 or lipe@emergemarketing.com
|
