CLAIM - Collaborative Learning and Involvement Marketing

CLAIM - Collaborative Learning and Involvement Marketing to claim more and more customers with confidence and pride.

Today I am introducing this concept in marketing, called, CLAIM and I will try to explain, how, you can acquire more customers and convert more prospects into customers by using this CLAIM concept.

Collaborative learning

What do you see people doing around you? From a CEO to a desk manager, from a machine shop owner to a software engineer, from a marketing professional to sales guy, every one is involved in a day to day task of there own. To accomplish that task they are communicating and applying knowledge or their skills. Either they are using their previously acquired knowledge/network or they are learning new skills/building new network. They are talking to each other, talking to customers and prospects, keeping in touch professionally or socially, they are searching information, they are reading or writing they are leveraging everything possible to collaborate and accomplish their tasks, everyday.

How different are the things from earlier days and now? Well in 1970s if you were to acquire accomplish any task, you would be talking to someone senior, spending time with them and learn from their experience. However, with fast paced life in today’s world, it’s getting difficult to do that. So what do people do today? People leverage the knowledge networks and their professional networks. They learn from the knowledge already available to them. There are multiple sources of knowledge today from learning from the case studies, whitepapers, research reports, survey analysis, personal network, professional network, open question and answers online and vast knowledge available in terms of best practices on Internet.

People are collaborating with each other to help each other learn and grow much faster than they could have otherwise.

As Graham Jones pointed out in his post “online advertisers are failing to understand people”, it is partially evident, that ads are disruptive. This means: you can catch the attention once; however, does that have a positive effect? No.

So what does the marketer DO?

Re-focus on customers!

It’s becoming simpler to answer this complex situation, Collaborate with the customers/prospects and keep the Learning process ON always. Open up your ears and eyes and whatever possible to learn from the customers. And be genuinely interested in making the customer successful.

Make it a 3 way learning process.

New Customer/Prospect <-----> Marketer <----->Existing Customer

Learn from your existing customers, learn from your new customer or prospect and then share the knowledge from an existing customer to another customer and repeat this cycle.

Come up with solutions to present issues that a customer is facing. Make your present customer successful and make the successful customers your sales people.

Involve the customers and prospects in your marketing by interacting with them and making them do the Word of Mouth.

Getting your intentions correct – Though it’s a long term strategy and many organizations are ignoring it in the pretext of short term sales and revenue, the genuine intention of making your customers successful is dying. While your customer is struggling with an issue in their work, you as a marketer is showing benefits to the customers and not projecting the genuine intent for a solution. Collaborate with them to showcase the best solutions out there from your research and learning from other customers.

Reach out as a support in communities and professional networks. Provide research and best practices at no charge and make people successful in their jobs. Does this need time and money from your side? Yes it does, however, it is important now to collaborate and involve people in your marketing effort.

With Collaboration and Continous Involvement of your customers and prospects in the marketing process, you CLAIM more and more customers with pride!