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Knowledge Marketing Use what you know to sell and market more effectively

Written by: Thomas Young

Article Overview: There is no question that it is becoming more difficult to gain a competitive edge in marketing services and products. Market forces push marketing and sales professionals to find new ways to differentiate themselves from competitors and add value to their customers. One often over-looked method for doing this is through “knowledge marketing.”

Knowledge Marketing Use what you know to sell and market more effectively

There is no question that it is becoming more difficult to gain a competitive edge in marketing services and products. Market forces push marketing and sales professionals to find new ways to differentiate themselves from competitors and add value to their customers. One often over-looked method for doing this is through “knowledge marketing.”

Knowledge marketing involves setting yourself apart from competitors by becoming an expert in understanding perceived customer benefits. It also involves understanding your specific marketplace and the trends that impact customers. This goes beyond product knowledge and sales demonstrations to becoming a valued advisor to your prospects and current accounts.

Become an Expert

You will stand out from your competition as an expert in your marketplace. This is easier to do than you may think. It does not involve hours of product training, but rather the ability to decipher and communicate market trends that are driven by the needs of your customers.

For example, a friend of mine works in employee benefits. Walter is an expert in employee health insurance trends and the reaction to those trends by consumers and companies. He can provide firsthand examples to back up his points. I am amazed at how much Walter knows about the industry.

Because of Walter’s marketplace knowledge, he is my first choice for employee health insurance. He understands the market and how it impacts his customers. What is interesting is that Walter does not discuss his products or services, but I can see why he has a successful business. It is assumed that he knows his products, which he does, and better yet, he thoroughly understands the market and customer needs.

Stay current on the trends in your marketplace. The best way to do this is through discussions and feedback from your prospects and current customers. This will help you understand real customer benefits, which are the key to sales and marketing success.

The Magic is in the Details

It is the details of your product and service that push customer hot buttons and make up benefits. You should understand these details as they relate to the specific needs of your customers. Sales people are notorious for spending time on features that do not mean anything to customers and ignoring the most important buying signals that can lead to a sale.

When a consumer begins the process of buying a product or service, there are usually a few key items that are very important and at the heart of the sale. In their first interaction with a sales rep, they are often overwhelmed with information. Rather than dumping information, take a step back and listen to your customers and get to know their business.

Ask Before You Speak

Have probing questions ready to go that get at the real issues on the mind of your customers and prospects. Use the answers to build a database of knowledge and information that you can use to relate back to your target market. More importantly, use this information to educate your customers and become an expert in your marketplace.

Knowledge Marketing Action Plan

In order to get results with knowledge marketing, you must begin educating and training your target market. This can be done through seminars, workshops, sales meetings, articles, public speaking and other methods that bring your message to your prospects and customers. The key is that your message must provide value and benefit to your target market. It must be a transfer of knowledge that helps your customers do their jobs better or enhance the quality of their lives.

Internet Knowledge Marketing

The Internet is a fantastic vehicle for knowledge marketing. Visitors to your Web site are looking for information that can help them do their job more effectively or enhance the quality of their lives. Get in touch with these customer objectives and provide valuable content on your site and via email newsletters. Also, distribute that content to other Web sites that attract your target market.

The Web is loaded with product reviews and information on products and services. These reviews are incredibly powerful marketing resources and great tools for understanding customer reactions. Provide outlets on your Web site for customers to discuss your products and services. Build on this type of information to become a knowledge marketing wiz.

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Re: Service Or Product? - I agree with starting a Service-based Business in the economy. Here is what I think is critical: 1. Researching that your Service business has a market. 2. Marketing the Service with as much leverage as possible. 3. Product-izing the Service (aka Package Expert Knowledge). This will only help elevate you as "the" expert in your niche and make you accessible to people in different price points.
Re: Getting ready to sell by childhood baseball card collection. - Part of my holding on to them came from me not knowing how to sell them effectively. If I took them to a card store I'd get pennies on the dollar. If I sold them online I'd get closer to market value but it would be way too time consuming. I then recently discovered that a family member of a friend of mine sold collector cards on eBay as a side business so I asked if she would sell mine and take a commission on the sale. She agreed so I have until Thursday to get it all organized!
Re: Starting a Online T-shirt Company - I recently started a tshirt printing and embroidery business. We are still in a start up phase but have already found out how important your niche is. We spent a lot of time finding our niche, our customers and how we would reach them. As soon as we attempted to market to our niche we found several flaws in our marketing plan. Luckily we were also able to talk to some people in our related niche and got some excellent ideas on how to market our products. I would suggest that you think about who you are going to sell to, where they buy their clothes now, who your competition is and how do they market to their customers. Then do a test marketing to see if it works. During the test of our marketing is when we found out it would take way too much time and money to market the way we had planned. Now we are marketing to a different market but with the same end customer. An example would be wanting to sell t-shirts with sport team logos. The market appears to be the sports fan. But when you look at marketing to all the sports fans in the country, state, county or school, you will find it very expensive and impractical. But if you have a unique enough of a design you can market it to the sports stores or concession stands and have them sell it to the sports fan. Yes, the money may be less, but the profit will be higher as you will sell more shirts than you could on your own.
Re: Franchise of a popular call center - If you have knowledge in running a call center and know how to manage it effectively then it sounds like it’s a good business for you. Workforce management relates to employee matters like payroll, HR, and employee training. Knowledge management relates to research, strategies, innovations and the effective use of technology. In both cases your prime clients are corporate sectors especially those who want to reduce their cost and increase performance at all levels.
predeteremined corporate lifetime - I have launched a venture that is developing technology that's time has come and even with protection (patents, copyright, exclusivity) will undoubtedly be a target of bigger players with deeper pockets. As suc, I have designed the business plan to have a termination. That is to say, the intent is to develop, test, market and sell the entire ball of wax to the highest bidder at a predetermined point, thus effectively planning for it's own demise. Is this a practice that is recognized or does anyone have experience with such a company? Seer


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