More great stuff from Kathy Sierra at Creating Passionate Users. Kathy contrasts the traditional budget-busting marketing promotion approach (one of the classic 4Ps) with a nickel-and-dime approach to inspiring and educating users and customers. We’ve talked about the importance of persuasion in the new Ps. Kathy’s stuff resonates as always.
Traditional Promotion vs. Inspiration (Persuation)
Kathy lists several promotion activities from the old school ideas they teach in marketing degree courses and contrasts them with low-cost ideas designed to inspire users, and thereby inspire people to purchase our products or purchase more of our products – because they want to be inspired too. A couple of our favorites:
- Showcase product features vs. Showcase user accomplishments
- Promotional contests vs. User awards
- Keeping the barrier to entry high, vs. Freely sharing information, knowledge, tips and tricks
Marketing by Teaching
The main message here is that to teach well, we have to be inspired. And inspiration leads to better products. Teaching users how to use our better products helps them cross the suck threshold, and makes them happy. And happy to use our products. The happier they are, the more passionate they become (the theme of Kathy’s writing). Passionate about our products.
While in the past, those who out-spent (on ads, and big promotions) would often win, that’s becoming less and less true today for a lot of things–especially the things designed for a younger, more-likely-to-be-online user community.
Kathy’s education post includes a dozen links that let you drill down into different elements of her area of expertise.
