First Step Marketing

Home Depot’s vast assortment of building supplies shows that it, too, knows that customers savor choice. But an even more important reason for its lasting success is that it knows how to capitalize on a customer’s wish to perform a task him- or herself. Home Depot employs our second strategy to attract the searchers, showering them with advice and insight.

This paradise for those who subscribe to do-it-yourself turns modestly competent amateurs into confident renovators and barely competent fumblers into people capable of remodeling their kitchens. Home Depot’s employees don’t do the job for you. Instead, they make accessible the information, products, and people you need to complete it for yourself. You feel capable of improving your own skills, which is exactly the feeling that searchers are seeking.

In the same way Cisco complements its in-person customer briefings with electronically delivered education, Home Depot uses the Internet to broaden its reach. Its Web site resembles the self-help section of a bookstore or library, offering a wide array of instant advice and step-by-step guidelines for beginners and more advanced customers. Fix it, build it, grow it, decorate it, or install it—whatever the project, Home Depot clearly wants to become the searcher’s preferred source of empowerment. Online training seminars should be the next logical step.

The smart company pursuing searchers knows the value of keeping them informed and educating them about their products. Sony, for example, devises more technological gadgets than_ the average consumer can even imagine. Though its strategy used to be to flood the market with a wide assortment of products and then focus on those that created their own demand, lately Sony has been making sure that its customers explore all of the benefits of its products.

For example, in its brochures and on its user-friendly Web site, Sony teaches people how to use PlayStation, its new video game system. It figures that a customer who has been educated by Sony is less likely to defect to Philips, Sanyo, Sharp, or any other brand.

Searchers soak up information like a sponge. For them, knowledge and content is king, and that’s why deluging them with meaningful information is a winning strategy. When they surf the Web, they nourish their appetite by clicking on every promising link to related Web sites. They also enjoy exchanging thoughts with like-minded folks, either in person or in chat rooms on the Internet. Among their favorite suppliers are new media companies such as Yahoo! (which is the topic of our next chapter) and Internet retailers like Amazon.com.

To appreciate Amazon.com’s appeal to searchers, ignore for a moment its wide assortment and the convenience it offers of being able to order from your home. Instead, imagine what it would be like if Amazon.com were a bricks-and-mortar retailer. Stripped of its Internet roots, Amazon would still cut a strong profile in the marketplace, as long as it continued to seduce the customer with knowledge. For searchers—a large proportion of its customer franchise—Amazon’s true value lies in the treasure trove of information it makes available on the merchandise it sells— whether it is books, CDs, vitamins, or toys suited for twelve-tofourteen-year-olds. Amazon is popularizing an alternative way of doing what smart retailers have always done: showering interested customers with information, advice, and recommendations. What’s different is the scope, nature, and timeliness of what they provide. In a matter of minutes, customers can find the most comprehensive list of books on even the most esoteric topic, or check what other people in their company or community are buying. Within hours of the launch of the latest and anxiously awaited Harry Potter blockbuster, customers can peruse reviews and share their joy with others.

Searchers clearly value information at the time of purchase. But that’s not the only time when information matters. It can be equally useful in making customers more proficient after the sale—when they’re using or fixing the product. Examples of companies catering to searchers‘ desire to be self-reliant and fix their own problems aren’t hard to find. Just take a closer look at Hewlett-Packard’s or Microsoft’s Web sites, and you’ll find a host of diagnostic tools, knowledge bases, and other sorts of information that help customers troubleshoot their printer or word processing software on their own. Another look at these sites also shows that they are geared toward a higher level of sophistication than what would be suited for the average customer. And that’s exactly what makes them a searcher’s dream.

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Saturate Customers with Information

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 12th, 2008 at 1:01 am and is filed under Education, Franchising. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.