Great product AND great product experience

We always hear that content is king. Content here referring to the Product offered by the company. But to have a great product is not enough. If you want to grow your business much faster (or in fact, even be in business in the next 5 years), you have to understand that you have to give your client A GREAT product experience as well. You can't have one without the other.

How many companies can you think of that has great marketing material (brochures, advertising, etc) but do not follow it through with a great product experience. Example: It’s lunch time and I am hungry. I go to a burger fast food outlet (not going to mention the brand) and look at this mouth-watering poster (marketing) of a burger, chips and coke. But the product is not as described by the words/pictures in the poster.

The burger is cold & thin and not “sizzling” and I was served by an employee that didn’t seem to care less if I would be about to have a great customer experience …no warm, friendly smile nor any connection with me with an “enjoy your day” approach.

My conclusion: the product and experience was BAD, but the marketing was GREAT.

The lesson here is that companies will no longer get away with it anymore, because we are living on the dawn of a new marketing era, namely the internet era where people are spreading their BAD/GREAT experiences on the social networks daily on a huge scale.
Soon that Burger Franchise branch will experience a drop in sales and then when they close down they will look all surprised.

Why? Because 10 years ago, you could tell 10 people…now you can 100 of your friends on Facebook and it is likely that 100 of their friends may see your “product experience” as well. Not to mention the power of Twitter.

This Blog might sound negative to you at first, but here is the up-side and GOOD news for small businesses and entrepreneurs who do not have the big marketing budgets of large enterprises.

Should you deliver a great product AND great product experience, you no longer have to spend large amounts of money on traditional advertising BUT can use the most powerful marketing means there is, namely, WORD-OF-MOUTH, which is now scalable through the medium of the Internet and using the many free apps and tools available to everybody.
Should you build up a relationship with your clients/customers online, they will try your product. Should it be a great product/service and you continue to build the relationship for a life-time through regular conversations via web marketing tools, you WILL BUILD EMOTIONAL EQUITY with your clients.

You will no longer PUSH marketing “down their throats” but will PULL them in by LISTENING to what they are experiencing and respond to the necessary changes that needs to be made to improve your
business.

The result: Your business will grow, but you must not ignore or be lazy to implement the hard work. The easy days of solving “sales growth problems” with bigger marketing budgets and “throwing more money at advertising” are over. CONNECTING with your customer/client online and ENGAGING with them daily by talking AND listening to them will see your profits soar.
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Calvin Dorman is a Professional Online Business Consultant and Graphics/Web Marketing Lecturer from Cape Town, South Africa, offering companies and individuals more effective Web Marketing, one to one Computer Training and Graphic Design solutions. Give him a call on 084 632 6622. Read more of Calvin’s business and motivational articles at http://www.calvinbusiness.co.za