When is your content technical support and when is it marketing? Good materials serve multiple purposes.
Marketing is a term that can be open to interpretation, even among marketers. For some it is all about lead gathering (information in). Others have a focus on advertising (information out). Fundamentally, it concerns communication, and creating an understanding between the customer, the producer of the product or service and everyone in between. The ultimate goal is for the customer’s needs to be met and for the company to successfully meet those needs without wasting money and effort.
In an ideal scenario, everyone wins.
Meeting customer needs is not just about producing a desirable widget and making sure everyone knows how desirable it is.
Particularly in B2B marketing, and especially when there is an ongoing service element of a company’s offering, communication is vital to making sure that the customer knows about all your widgets, buys the correct widget, knows how to use and maintain it properly and, also, that the widget is still the right one for them after several years.
In the medical diagnostics industry, the supply of consumables, training, ongoing applications and technical support are a crucial part of the solution. The instruments, for all their capabilities, extra parameters and fancy software, are only part of the equation. The promotion of the company and its customer support is as important, if not more so, than the equipment itself and this is an element that is often overlooked by marketing.
So, how can marketing get involved?
It isn’t always easy, particularly in large organisations where departments can sometimes have siloed thinking. There can also be politics involved about who does what, but the most successful companies break down those barriers and create effective teams,
Good communication is all important in the ongoing relationship with a customer and is key to business retention.
Marketing has an important contribution to make.
So, on to the practicalities. Sometimes the most effective marketing doesn’t seem like marketing at all.
Training Materials:
Many companies produce materials to supplement the standard, factory produced user manuals. Because of regulatory requirements, official documents contain a lot of details that are irrelevant to day to day operation of the equipment. Customers are reluctant to wade through it all just to find the information they need. Additional materials can include:
Quick guides
Wall charts
Video
Presentations
E-learning content
The responsibility for this, quite rightly, is with the technical support team and the marketing department doesn’t necessarily have subject matter experts with the required in-depth knowledge to create these materials. They can, however, help to make sure materials are clear, attractive and on-brand. The marketing team can also re-purpose training content to showcase the company’s capabilities in customer support through brochures and digital marketing or social media channels.
For the strategic marketer, looking to ensure that product or market development is on the right track, this direct involvement in customer support gives an invaluable insight into customer needs.
Scientific Content:
Peer review is an important tool to promote diagnostics equipment. Impartially produced materials carry far more weight when proposing solutions than anything said by a product specialist or salesperson. It allows customers to visualise equipment in their laboratory or clinic and see how it could handle their samples.
The company can support the production of scientific studies in many ways; help with protocols, statistical analysis, providing images, formatting posters and sponsorship to attend national and international events.
In my opinion, company scientific personnel and product managers should try to resist having their name on the paper or poster. Obviously, acknowledgments should be made, particularly if there has been any financial support or free equipment loans and reagents, but the more independent the paper, the more credibility it has. This is one instance where obvious branding, however beautiful, should be avoided.
Once the paper or poster is in the public domain, there is then an opportunity for website links and social media activity and this shouldn’t be overlooked.
This activity helps to increase the scientific and brand image of the company.
The Customer Newsletter:
Newsletters and similar communications can be a fantastic tool to engage with existing customers and also entice prospective new customers to become part of the ‘club’.
They should not, however, be a cynical vehicle to exclusively push new products or services. The content needs to be relevant and engaging, ideally containing independent articles and informative content. It gives the company the opportunity to position themselves as educators which, like having good scientific visibility, can be a powerful brand enhancer.
Here, unlike with independent scientific papers, branding guidelines are important and should be used to link the company to the (hopefully) interesting content provided.
Again, links via social media, can help to grow the readership and promote the brand.
The Sponsored Event:
Sponsorship can be expensive and sometimes it can be difficult to demonstrate return on investment particularly, as with scientific papers and posters, the company should avoid ‘grandstanding’ products and services.
They do, however, provide good opportunities for networking and information gathering and can sometimes provide a focused audience, free from interference from competitors, as well as helping to build brand awareness.
Choose wisely, plan carefully.
Conclusion
The examples above are all ways in which the day to day interactions that companies should have routinely with their customers can be enhanced by the marketing function and also used to promote products and the overall brand. The list is not exhaustive and I intend to explore these and other topics in more detail in future articles
It is important to remember that these opportunities should never be an exploitation of technical support to push advertising. Customers will see through this strategy instantly. It is not enough for a company to say they are ‘customer focused’, they must be genuine in that claim and demonstrate it in their day to day activities.
Materials should be engaging, informative, relevant and useful to the customer otherwise they will soon lose interest. The use of branding and exploiting internal or outsourced skills such as graphic design and videography should be seen as a help by technical support, not a hindrance.
Teamwork is essential and, by blurring the lines between customer support and marketing, the company can gain insight into customer needs and create that elusive win-win situation.
Surely this can’t be marketing? Of course, it is!
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