By Malik Azeez, Director of Product Information Management
We continue to see a phenomenal decline in attention span in each new generation. One study suggests that Generation Z has an attention span of only about eight seconds – this means we only have a fleeting amount of time to sell a product. This is augmented by a trend amongst the generation – social media is a disruptor which dictates inclinations towards products or services.
With every new product, companies have the ability to influence customers, both via value and company or product visibility. Value is inherent to business and is mandatory for a sustainable enterprise. The focus here is on visibility which is the most important aspect of influence in today’s era.
Visibility can be attained through various means. A few key notes:
Richness of Product
A customer should be able to see that a company overtakes competitors by explaining every detail consistently across all similar products. There should also be emphasis on those details that help them to make a decision in those eight seconds of attention.
A manufacturing company highlights every single metric for a buyer to understand, evaluate, and get a feel for a product.
Relevance of Product
Target customers are to be studied deeply and the specifics of products will need to address the relevance to their current needs. We see multiple products with overlapping features, but there is only one thing the item specializes in. That specialization should reach a target market by highlighting relevance.
An ecommerce retailer highlights a phone with an on-screen flash to target buyers that heavily use the self-facing cameras.
Future of Product
Combined with relevance, scalability or survival in the growing technological evolution should also be highlighted. We notice that many of today’s shoppers look to supplement their current gadgets with increasingly futuristic inventions.
An ecommerce retailer advertises a smart watch next to the latest phone, planting the awareness seed for a next purchase.
In order to establish this level of visibility for products or services, we need to deeply analyze current portfolios to identify gaps, allowing us to better understand how we can tell a compelling story to a buyer. Large businesses may have multiple data platforms which cause a lack of cohesiveness that hampers them from efficiently building said offering to a prospective buyer.
It is absolutely critical to have a solution in place that can manage products, market, sell, and analyze demand. Our relevance of tomorrow is limited by our ability to innovate.
Curious to learn more about how this applies to real-world scenarios? Take a look at our success story for a Fortune 500 global electronics and supply distributor.