It is a blindingly obvious truism that ecommerce companies cannot effectively sell things to customers without engaging in some marketing first. However, what is less well known is what this marketing actually does – or should be doing.
Everyone knows that marketing is there to influence customer purchase habits and convince potential customers that a product or service is worth investing in. Everyone also knows that a part of this is the reinforcement of brand identity and the fostering of brand identification, allowing other products attached to the brand to sell well too. What is less known is that ecommerce marketing also serves the role of educating customers, too.
Of course, this is not an entirely altruistic aspect of marketing, but it isn’t entirely mercenary either. Customer education can be thought of as a means of educating customers about the product, but this can be as much to serve their needs when using it as well as to convince them to use it. Furthermore, most business experts specializing in ecommerce agree that video marketing is probably the most effective way of going about this. Why? Well, it is basically the principle of “show don’t tell”.
The Importance of Videos in Customer Education
So, video marketing for the purposes of customer education is widely agreed to be the most effective way of going about it. Think of a video tutorial for, say, an electric drill that prominently features the product, but which also educates customers on the many different DIY jobs that can be completed with it or some ideas for things they could build with it.
This example clearly shows the intersection of marketing and helpful customer education. We Make Videos, a video production company that also deals in marketing videos, put it pretty well when they say that customer education videos are both a form of marketing and a form of customer service. For sure, they are both.
Benefits of Creating a Customer Education Strategy
You can of course simply integrate customer education principles into your existing video marketing strategy, but you can also create a specialized customer education strategy too. Customer education is aimed (mainly, but not always) at existing customers. It is there to help them make informed purchase decisions that answer their needs. However, it is also there to reinforce the brand to which they have already, to some extent, made themselves loyal.
There are very many advantages to this approach. Here are a few of them:
Enhancement of Customer Experience
Or the “CX” as those in the know like to call it. Today the supposed “remoteness” of ecommerce is fast becoming a thing of the past. Customers today expect to feel like they are being given specialized attention. If they already have a product of yours in their possession, then they will almost certainly respond positively to a video explaining how they can get the most out of it.
Reinforcement of Customer Loyalty
We touched on this briefly above. If customers are educated about your brand and your products, then they simply know your company a lot better – intimately, even. This is marvelous for fostering brand loyalty and identification.
Alleviates the Burden on Support Services
Another form of customer service is support services. If a customer is more educated about your products, brand, website, etc. in the first place, then you’ll be receiving a lot fewer irritating calls or inquiries along the lines of, “How do I do this”, “This happened, what do I do”, and “Where can I find…”. You could end up saving money here.
Marketing is important and customer education is important. To be a winning brand, why not offer both in one?
