Don't Fog Their Vision: Be Clear About the Commitment Your Customers are Making
Wednesday, August 5, 2009My wife and I are investigating online charter schools as a way to educate our children. All the programs we've looked at tout the value of parental involvement and the flexibility of working online. But they fail to answer two of our most basic questions: 1) how much time is likely to be required of us, and 2) Will our child have to be online at certain times for scheduled activities?
It all comes down to one question: "If we sign up with you what is our commitment?"
No one should be expected to do business with someone until they know the answer to that question. That goes for online charter schools; that goes for copywriters (that's me) and that goes for you and your business.
Most of us know that we need to talk about the benefits of our products or services, but how many of us talk about what our customer's commitment is?
Our customers' commitment isn't just price. For retail, often the commitment is obvious or simple in that they have to follow instructions for the product. But have you ever bought something and found out it needed an additional product in order for some of the features to work or that you had to assemble it, but didn't realize it? Those sorts of things cause frustration.
This is even more true in service fields. Will your customer have to fill out a questionnaire? Will they have to meet with you? How often and for how long? Will they have to train their staff differently to implement your service or recommendations? Will their be costs besides your fee?
Don't suprise your customers. Be up front about the amount of commitment required on their part.
Will that scare some customers off? Occasionally. But remember: a satisfied customer tells 5 people about you, but a disappointed customer tells 500 people.
Labels: Advertising, Marketing, Marketing Campaign, Product Quality
posted by John E Fike @ 6:11 AM,
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