In his fourth guest blog post here on this blog Rajneesh Kumar of Pimcore makes the case for investing in Product Information Management in order to drive customer engagement and sell more:

What makes customers to buy a product? Lots of theories are conceptualized regarding the science, art, and psychology of customer behavior. Companies leave no stone unturned to grab customers’ attention and importune them to buy products. But, things are not as simple as it looks like because the buying cycle is becoming more and more complicated with growing options and multiple customer touch points.

Brands must adapt to the new reality, faster. They need to make consistent efforts in all dimensions. During each buying stage, customers formulate a consideration set and evaluate each option on criteria significant to them. Thus, organizations need to consider all aspects of buying cycle to woo more customers. Here are few factors that can play an important part to hook more customers:

Create Desire:

Let’s put aside what’s in consumer’ mind rather than focus on what should be presented to customers. The simpler and authentic product information would be, easier it will be for customers to make a buying decision. The first line of engagement is to infuse trust with reliable information that would influence and attract buyers. It must create desire amongst customers while providing value that is required.

Unlock Full Value:

Every product has its unique value. More explicitly you represent it; better the chances will be to attract customers. Make sure the hidden USP or locked value of your product should come in front of the customers at every channel where customers interact. Every type of product information, its attributes, and its relations make a decisive contribution in buying decision. You must make a conscious effort to reveal the full value and all potential benefits.

Immerse in Omnichannel World:

We live in a world of interconnected systems and brands cannot flourish without taking an omnichannel approach. It means your product information must be seamless across all channels. And, it is something you cannot go wrong with. Every customer demands same experience across all channels. Never let the bad omnichannel experience ruin the party. You must do it when you can do it.

Be Agile:

‘I am the first one who grabbed it.’ Customers love competition amongst themselves. When we add up competitors’ equation, you can understand how competitive the market has become. Delays kill the experience. You always need to make sure your product is introduced timely to get maximum benefits. In today’s scenarios, maintaining and managing spreadsheets won’t work. You got to be agile in today’s time to ensure higher growth. Decrease complexity within the purchase occasion as much as you can.

Investing in Product Information Management:

In the world of digital, product information management is an involving discipline. Product information management in organizations encompasses a wide range of functions. In most centrally managed organizations, product information management is seen as a key functional area alongside other key functions. While product quality, brand, and price, responsiveness, speediness, courtesy may be important in the shopping process, high level of product knowledge may be more important for organizations to streamline the process.

But, it is equally important to have a rock-solid product information management system that facilitates in consolidating scattered data, provides faster-time-to-market and enables omnichannel success, including:

• Provide trusted, relevant and complete product data that delight customers.
• Quickly publish consistent and accurate product information across channel for seamless omnichannel experience.
• Provide a consolidated view of product information to enable sales and marketing teams to cross-sell and up-sell.
• Consolidate, enrich, translate, and manage product data and other various data such as customer data, vendor data, and other digital assets.
• Keep track of web, mobile, app, marketplace, and social.
• Enable Point of Sale integration, digital signage, and web-to-print omnichannel enablement.

The other side of the story is that there is still no clear-cut unanimity about how a product information management solution does good to an organization. Thus, it is essential to understand the critical role of product information in achieving desired business goals. We recommend you start not just by identifying your product information management challenges but also how solving the problems will make your life easier, plus you can run your business better.

Forward-thinking brands understand the need to unleash the disruptive power of consolidated information to drive customer engagement and boost revenue. Thus, the investment in providing better and unique customer value should be deeply considered. It is not just a technology or platform investment; it is a customer investment.

A digital marketer and growth hacker, Rajneesh Kumar is currently marketing manager at Pimcore Global Services (PGS), an award-winning consolidated open source platform for product information management (PIM), web content management (CMS), digital asset management (DAM) and e-commerce. He is well versed with web analytic tools, paid media marketing and has hands on experience on seo techniques, organic promotion and content marketing.