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Understand Your Customers Problems Before Using Social Media
October 21, 2013 |Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
To use social media in your sales and marketing mix, you must really understand your customers’ problems and be able to help them with those problems. I’m going to illustrate this principle with a story from my own experience.
Every year in September, I take a week off with a group of old friends, rent a cottage in the wine country, and spend a week travelling the country roads and visiting wineries. We do a lot of wine tasting and purchase quite a few bottles of wine. This year, most of the wines were from grapes harvested last year and in 2010, with a few older vintages available. While much of the wine is quite drinkable now, a lot of it is stuff that is borderline now, but has potential. What if I bought a couple of bottles and put them away for a year or two? From past experience, we know that putting the wine away for a year or two can result in a fabulous bottle of wine, or one that never did get any better than when we purchased it.
This year we had had a successful first four days, seeing many wineries and vineyards--liking some wines and being not so keen on others. We were driving along the country road beside a lake when someone asked me who was next on the list. I replied that there was a place we had been to before and really liked about five miles down the road, but before that was a place that we hadn’t been previously. A couple weeks earlier, I'd put a request for ideas in the Wine and Spirits group on Linkedin and one person suggested this new location. So we pulled in.
It consisted of a barn and a smaller building that served as the tasting room. Now a lot of tasting rooms in this region are big, beautiful, and expensively appointed. This place? Unassuming and rustic, almost western in feel. A lot of unfinished wood and a room used for real winery work--there was a young man sitting on a bench in the back of the room carefully applying labels to bottles. We all lined up at the tasting bar and were knocked out. These wines were good! Really good! The winery owner joined us about halfway through and he told us the reason why: “I don’t think wine one or two years old is ready yet. I won’t sell it that young. It needs time.” Sure enough, the vintage dates on his bottles were marked 2002 to 2007. All his wine was at least five years old. His “youngest” wine was the same age as the oldest wine sold almost anywhere else in the area.
After a thoroughly enjoyable talk with the owner we purchased a case of his wine, despite the fact it cost nearly 20% more than his peers. And here’s the thing: Other places we would buy a couple of bottles on spec because it probably would be really good in a year or two. With this place we bought 12 because we knew they were really good now. More than anyone else in the area, this owner understood one of the problems his customers were facing: Uncertainty on how their wine would age. He understood people would pay a premium for a wine that people could really enjoy tonight as opposed to next summer.
Although this story isn’t about social media, it illustrates the issue you have as a social media marketer--understanding what keeps your customers up at night. What are their problems? What do they need expert, outside help with that your company can provide?
Postscript: For anyone interested, the region discussed here is the Finger Lakes area of Western New York State. It’s a beautiful place to take a vacation. The vineyard that is the subject of this post is Shaw Vineyard on the west side of Lake Seneca. Shaw and a dozen other wineries in the area are really turning out some excellent wines. If you are willing to do a bit of homework first (Crowdsource! Use social media!) a visit to the Finger Lakes is worth the effort.Bruce Johnston is a sales consultant specializing in social media and especially LinkedIn. He has over 25 years experience in high tech sales and management. He can be reached at brucej@practicalsmm.com or through his profile on LinkedIn.