Edumarketer Tip #136: Identifying Your Product Offerings

In the past several tips we’ve identified your expertise, by answering who you are, what problems you solve, and what your customer looks like, now we will move on. Identifying your product offerings. There are a ton of products available in the mortgage industry and you may already specialize in an area like VA, Reverse or Renovation. It’s good to know your product offerings to help your customers know you. Let’s look at what that looks like. 

Edumarketing can bring your business and customers together. Understanding those two elements is the foundation of identifying what your customers want to know about. The first steps to take are to answer the following questions:

1.Who is your ideal customer? (Remember your customer segments)

2.What do they want?

3.What are your products and services?

4.What problems do your products and services solve for your customers?

5.What questions do you answer?

Who Is Your Ideal Customer?

We went through the exercise of identifying your ideal customer and your customer segments in previous chapters. It is important to remember to focus on specifics of your customer segments and drill down on how each of your products or services will help them. You may have crossed over into many of your customer segments, and that is fine, but as you go through this exercise, focus on your customer segments and your products and services and how it can help each of your customer segments.

What Do Your Customers Want?

Seems like a pretty basic question, doesn’t it? But, do you really know what they want? Can you give them what they want with your products and services? How do you know? Being able to know what your customers want is an important step to creating your edumarketing plan. Remember, each of your customer segments may have a different want. Let’s look at an example for our mortgage originator.

Ideal Customer: First-time Home Buyer

What do They Want: To be able to buy an affordable home in their budget.

It’s not rocket science, but it is important to know what your customer wants. 

Take a moment and complete what your customer(s) want. You don’t have to do this right now for all your customer segments, but eventually you will want to complete this activity.

Now, we will move on to identifying your products and services. Each of your products and services will provide a solution for your customers. It will be an answer to their wants, needs and questions. An essential part of getting your edumarketingplan right is understanding your audience. 

Let’s look at the products and services our mortgage originator offers:

1. Low down payment programs

2. VA home loan programs

3. Condo loan programs

4. Renovation home loan programs

5. Investment property loan programs

You should already have a good understanding of the products and services your business provides. You should also know who your ideal customer is and what they need. Let’s begin with the basics. What products and services do you offer? Take a few minutes to list out the products and services you currently offer. We will line everything up soon, so don’t worry about your customer segments yet, just complete the activity listing the products and services you currently offer.

Your next step is to identify what problems these products and services solve for your customers. We will use our mortgage originators as an example.

By taking each of your products or services and breaking each down into problems and solutions, you can come up with several ideas to help you start creating your edumarketing. 

Now, take each product and/or service you listed previously and answer the problems that each solves for your customers.

Identify Your Customers’ Questions

Your next step is to identify what your prospects and/or customers want to “learn” about. What questions do they have that you can answer for them? Let’s look at an example for a mortgage originator, who has a first-time home buyer as one of their segmented customer categories:

Let’s look at another example. Say you are a financial planner and one of your customer segments is someone between the age of 30 and 40 years old who wants to set up their long-term financial plan. They want to save for retirement, and they want to save for their children’s college education. 

We begin by identifying the ideal customer and what they want and match it to your product offering, then we write out what questions they may have that you can build your edumarketing plan around. 

Let’s look at the example for our financial planner:

Now, it’s your turn to complete this exercise for your ideal customer segments. Be sure to do this for each ideal customer category because you will want to build a specific edumarketing plan for each customer segment. This is critical because it will allow you to tailor specific education to each segment’s needs. Why is this important? Because if you are an investor looking to buy a rental property, you already know how to save for your first home, so watching a video on how to save for a down payment may not be of interest to you. You would be much more interested in watching a video on finding the right tenant or what properties are best for rental income. The more specific you can get to answering the questions your ideal customers have, the more they will see you as a trusted expert. Remember, you don’t have to be everything to everyone. Identifying your ideal customer will allow you to get specific and create that expert niche you are looking for. Take a moment and complete this task for each of your customer segments you identified earlier. Match them with your product offering, and then write out what questions they may have. Complete this exercise for all segments you identified for your ideal customer.

Let’s recap the steps to finding out what your customers want to learn about.

1.Who is your ideal customer? (Remember your customer segments)

2.Whatdo they want?

3.What are your products and services?

4.What problems do your products and services solve for your customers?

5.What questions do you answer?

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