MISTAKE #72: You do a poor job educating your prospects
If you’ve got a new product or a new brand, you’ve got to educate shoppers before they’ll buy. But first, you’ve got to get shoppers to want to (or be willing to) get educated.
That education might be minimal…involving little more than building awareness that a new color or scent or size is offered. Or that the new color or scent or size is somehow different or better than the old options.
If your product is a little more original or innovative, that educational process might be more involved. The need to provide education on complicated products is obvious and expected.
But even products that bring significant simplification need to educate shoppers. They may need to teach a new (easier) way to do something. Or they need to take time to build comfort with a new active ingredient or form or design. And maybe all of these are on top of convincing shoppers they are worth paying a premium price.
Or you may be doing the opposite…trying to teach shoppers that a new lower-priced product is just as good as higher-priced items.
Companies often forget that education involves a combination of emotion and logic. Similar to most things we do in life, the products we choose to buy are rarely based on purely rational, practical reasoning.
AN ILLUSTRATION...TO EDUCATE YOU
I’ll never forget an example used years ago as evidence of the limits of logic in decision-making.
It was from a medical conference where a bunch of doctors was discussing the need to invest more heavily in education to convince people to make healthier choices so they don’t become overweight or take up bad habits like smoking.
To challenge the group consensus that ignorance was the primary source of America's healthcare issues, one person stood up and made the following observation:
“Look around for a moment. This room is full of highly educated people, including many experts in their field of practice. Yet over half of us are obviously overweight…and how many have been stepping outside for a smoke during each break? We are well aware of the consequences of our bad decisions and yet we still make them. Spending more money on education programs is not the only solution.”
The same is even more true of the average shopper.
With limited exceptions, shoppers don’t want to feel like they’re going back to school or stuck in a classroom when learning about your product. A few might geek out at this type of education, but most will quickly disengage.
Humans tend to find more comfort with ignorance and habit if it allows them to maintain their existing routines. We all use selective belief or embrace facts that reinforce our existing views.
THE ENTERTAINMENT OF EDUCATION
As you launch your product, you’ll likely face the paradox of needing to educate people that don’t really want to be.
Taking cues from TED Talks and Khan Academy has demonstrated, that people will engage with an education that is brief, entertaining, and compelling.
It turns out the best way to get people to learn about your product and to the point of understanding why to buy involves making the process of learning feel less like formal education.
Make sure you’re not brushing over the role education plays in the purchase decision.
Realize that shoppers haven’t sat through the detailed presentations you’ve seen (or given) numerous times. Shoppers don’t know and probably don’t care about the charts and graphs and technical or legal support to prove that your product is superior. Yet they still need something to convince them that it is.
What shoppers really want is to hear you tell a story where your new product helps make them the hero. They want to be educated without realizing they’re being educated.
As you consider the role education needs to play to get shoppers to buy your product, consider some of the principles we’ve compiled in our article An Idiots Guide To Educating Your Shopper.