Does your prospect value what you're putting out in the marketplace? Welcome to "3"…three insights in about three minutes. I'm Drew Dinkelacker. To give us some insight on value, I turn to Jon Hay, the Vice President of Marketing at CIC Plus, that's a company that helps nearly half of the Fortune 100 manage their employer compliance efforts. Jon, just like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I think value is, too. How do you deliver value to prospects and customers through your communications?
Jon Hay: Absolutely, Drew. And I think back to a former life when I was a journalist and a journalism major, some of those fundamental principles hold true today. I think before you can deliver value, you really need to make sure that you're speaking your audience's language, so understanding their pain points, their opportunities, the challenges that they face. Once you establish that rapport and build that connection, I think it helps to build a bridge to have much more fruitful conversations around the value that you can deliver.
Drew: Can you give me an example of how that plays out in your communications, say when you're developing the content of a webinar?
Jon: Absolutely. When we think about putting any content piece together like a webinar, one of our fundamental marketing priorities is, establish ourselves and strengthen our position in the marketplace as a leader and an expert in this space. Doing that means that we're educating and informing our audiences, and so with the webinar, you may start by talking about whatever the latest trend is or issue in the marketplace, why it's important for employers to pay attention to this. But what we really focus on are the key takeaways and wanting to give people tangible things that they can take back to their organisations, to have better conversations, and hopefully take action to help improve their businesses.
Drew: Here's a riddle for you, Jon. Can you deliver value without having to address a customer pain point?
Jon: Absolutely. When you think about delivering value to the client, certainly it starts with meeting their business needs, but we're a B2B company, and so you want to establish long-term value-based relationships with your clients. And so it has to extend beyond simply the value that you provide with your products and building those relationships; and so a good example of that, in the pandemic, obviously it's been hard for us to make that connection with clients, either visiting them at their locations, hosting them at events, at industry conferences, and so we did something recently for a holiday campaign where we wanted to raise some money and do something good.
Jon: And so we encouraged our clients on social media to join us in supporting a very important charity, Special Olympics. We encouraged our VP of Business Development to take a Polar Bear Plunge if we raise the necessary funds. Everybody loved the idea. We were able to meet our donation goal, we matched those donations, so we raised over $15,000, and at the same time, I think everybody really enjoyed - probably, except for Jack! - enjoyed watching him plunge into a lake in frigid northern Wisconsin last year.
Drew: And that might be the pain point. The lesson learned here is that there are all kinds of ways to deliver value to the customer. "3" is a production of MarketingAccelerator.com, and it's just one of the resources we provide for marketing and business leaders. I'm Drew Dinkelacker.