Educating Your Customer

You’re educating customers all the time. As you provide a product or service, you’re teaching your customer about proper usage, and additional needs. But what about the other things you do. Ongoing communication with clients helps give them a better sense of your capabilities and knowledge. A newsletter, outbound email, or occasional post card about an issue or problem that is relevant to your customers needs, can give them a sense, over time, of your knowledge and additional products and services. If you’re an insurance broker, a newsletter or article on planning for retirement or a child’s education can be helpful and illuminate both your understanding of the core problems your client faces while underscoring the need for financial planning services.

And, newsletters don’t have to be printed. One of the most leveraged uses of the Internet, for example, is the ability to educate without the high cost of printing. By sending emails, and offering special introductory pricing or additional information about new and existing products and services, you’re creating awareness and credibility in the mind of your customer.

A more formal way to create an educated customer is through seminars. Having regular “updates” or inviting clients to presentations that you might be making at a conference or meeting, lets them know about your expertise and offerings. Even if they don’t come, you can offer to send them the outline of the presentation and the materials you distributed.