Marketing and use of education

I have written a few posts on this subject earlier also. What is different in this post is that I have been seeing which industries do more of this and which not so much.

What I have observed is that in India, its the financial industry – specifically Portfolio Management Companies and Equity investment houses and to a certain extent Mutual fund companies that do a lot of work towards educating their customers, in their own different ways.

So you could have representatives of fund houses come on business channels and on internet properties and talk about their view of where the market is going. Generally the underlying point of the discussion is related to the kind of fund they are launching.

I have already written earlier also about the enormous amount of knowledge that Raamdeo Aggarwal of Motilal Oswal spreads free of cost with his Wealth Creation studies. Its an enormous amount of effort these people would be going through to create these wealth creation studies. The amount of knowledge I have got through reading these free reports, of the Indian stock markets, is more than all the knowledge I have gained over the years by buying and reading books from international authors. to be fair to the international authors, there are certain nuances about the Indian stock market that are different than the more matured US stock markets.

An author whom I have written about earlier also is Saurabh Mukherjea. He weaves interesting stories in his books and includes a lot of background information about the Indian stock markets. He runs a company by the name of Marcellus Investments. You could read the books to gain the knowledge that he is giving or you could also understand the philosophy of their investment process. If you like it, you could actually also park your money with them. He has recently come out with a book Diamonds in the Dust:Consistent Compounding for Extraordinary Wealth Creation, again with a lot of in-depth examples and case studies.

All this education , in all the three examples, is given on absolute neutral basis, but all of them do inform about their philosophy and how their funds work, in passing. So if you like their philosophy you could decide to use them for your financial goals.

So as an example, since I had gained so much free education from Motilal Oswal, I felt obliged to open my demat account with them , when I wanted to enter into the stock market. Indirectly that investment in freely educating me, by Motilal Oswal, has resulted in consistent business for them.

See how you can utilise education to indirectly influence your prospects.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Just Ask …. you never know – Part 3

differentiation, education, ego, Fear, Marketing, Product Management, single target market

Today we will come down to the exact reason, why this idea is critical for anyone in marketing, product management or sales. This quality is absolutely critical to know and understand why someone is not buying from you, or why someone is not referring customers to you etc.

Marketing and product management teams have to ensure that their product / service sells in the market. That there’s a demand for their product or service on a continuous basis.

If the product is not moving then it becomes imperative to check out the prospects on why they aren’t buying from you. Is the category itself not moving or only your product within the category.

A lot of time guys in the field assume it’s price. That’s the first statement you will always hear if your product is not moving with respect to the competition in the same category. It’s very rare that people get out, in the field to ask questions to the prospects.

Like I mentioned in the first two posts , most of the times, it is our ego and our fear , which stops us from asking the questions. Asking the right questions in the market is key to getting your marketing right. If inspite of all the systematic planning you do, with identifying the single target market and identifying the differentiators and also educating your prospects, then its critical that you get down into the market and systematically ask a large cross section of the market, on what is the hinderance in wanting to buy your product.

A lot of times its just the perception, that is causing people to resist what you have to sell. Sometimes its lack of knowledge. But you will not be able to address these things if you don’t ask. Curiosity is not always a bad thing. And curiosity to know why the product that you are selling is not moving is absolutely essential for your business.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing is Education – Part 5

differentiation, education, Marketing, Methodologies, Positioning, route to market, travel, Trust

In my first 3 posts I was talking about the concept of how education can elevate your position in the market. I have used consultants as examples, I have used Indian brands also. Yesterday I wrote about a French perfume company. Today I will talk about an internationally well known tourism industry brand Trip Advisor.

The best thing about TripAdvisor is that it never tries to sell you anything. You can go look at people’s reviews of hotels, places etc. You can figure out what people liked about a place, what were the best spots etc. All of this is very conveniently put up front. As a matter of fact if you will search about a given location or a hotel in a location – you will typically find Trip Advisor in the top 10 searches on Google. And this inspite of the fact that most of the other search results will talk about the cheapest fares etc.

Initially I used to look at the Trip Advisor ratings for a hotels. What were the other travellers talking about. Slowly I got hooked to the idea of going to the site for everything when I was planning a trip to a place which I had not visited in many many years.

Trip Advisor has a sister site called Viator. So while I was searching for the best places to visit, tickets and other possibilities in New York I also got an option to buy the Travel Pass from them. Guess what, I bought it from them.

If you go on the web to search, you would get a lot of deals giving the same pass at lower rates. But because Trip Advisor has created such a trust relationship because of their education and unbiased user reviews, I didn’t think of even looking for lower options. Now its a standard practice for me to see what Trip Advisor or Viator are offering , what are the user ratings and then buying it from there.

Now does it mean that everyone who comes on the TripAdvisor site also ends up buying from them or their sister site. Absolutely not. And that would be true of all education based methodologies. Not everyone will buy from you. But that would be true for any methodology / positioning that you use. You could choose to have the lowest cost methodology for your positioning, but you would still not get the whole market to yourself. These companies differentiate themselves with the education they offer and create what Jay Abraham calls as position of Pre-Eminence.

Since I like to work with and give business to people I trust, all the examples I have given, till date ,are of companies that have used education to create that trust with me.

Till next time then. See how you can use education to create a marketing pull for your product or service.

Carpe Diem!!!

Marketing is Education – Part 4

differentiation, differentiation, education, Marketing, Positioning, route to market

How many of you have heard of the perfume brand ….Fragonard

When we think of perfumes, the typical names which come to our mind are Nina Ricci, Channel, Givenchy, Boss etc. Fragonard…never heard of it, or at least I had never heard of it.

When we went to Paris, we had taken the Paris Pass. One of the coupons as part of the Pass was the visit to a perfume museum where they would show you how perfumes are made.

So we decided to take the tour because we had never seen perfume being made. They had various language guides and the moment they had a large enough crowd they would start the tour. Our guide was tremendous. Inspite of the fact that she was French, she spoke very clear English and explained the complete history of how the initial perfumes got made, then how the various flavours and fragrances are created etc.

After the history and the processes she spoke about how perfumes evaporate, how they should be kept, what kind of containers should be used, and the concentration levels if the perfume has to last long on your body.

All this information you need to understand was biased towards what they were offering. This is not to say they were giving wrong data. They were however showcasing data that got you oriented towards their offering.They also took up the issue of not doing mass advertising to create a brand awareness, head-on, and eliminating it as a objection, as part of the education process. This differentiation of using education rather than showing models has kept them in good stead. They have been in business for more than 100 years I think.

All the queries were so masterfully handled by the guide, it was as if she was an amazing teacher.

At the end of the tour then she came up with the offer, since we had spent time visiting them, only at that time (limited time / scaricity )from her (reciprocity)- because she had given all this education free of cost to us, quite a few of us ended up buying a lot of perfumes.

My family and I had not gone with any agenda to buy, we still ended up buying more than Euro250 worth of perfumes. And the bigger fact is that we didn’t have a buyer’s remorse, that we had been tricked. We were actually feeling so happy that we got such good perfumes.

As a sidebar – the perfumes are really good, they do last much longer than the other brands even in the hot weather of India because the concentrate level is much higher than others. Also since they are packed in metal containers , unlike most other brands which are packed in glass, these last much longer in the bottle also.

You see the benefit of the education they gave me, I have given you the exact things they taught me about what should be seen while buying a perfume. They have made a permanent client. Whenever I go to Paris, Fragonard….will be on my list of places to visit to buy perfumes.

Can you see how you can utilise education to create a strong image in the mind of the customer.

Till next time then.

Carpe Diem!!!