Marketing and Educating Simultaneously

How many people that use a regular old telephone know what VoIP is? My guess is not as many as VoIP companies would like. Good marketers know that one of the best ways to market a product is to educate users on the benefits of the product and what their losing out on by not using ‘Product X.’ I took a poll and asked my friends if they knew what VoIP was and most of them replied with a perplexed look and said ‘What?’ I am talking about 30-45 year old college educated individuals. Out of 10 people that I asked 2 knew what it was, 3 knew that it had to do with voice communication over a physical device and the other 5 thought it was a website. I give all of them credit for knowing that it is at the very least a technologically related communication tool. One of the 2 that knew what VoIP was, said VoIP is saving her a lot of money on her regular chats with family and friends in the UK.

What I found most unusual about my survey is that the business owners I surveyed knew what VoIP was but didn’t really understand what it could do for their business in the way of savings and streamlining communication tools. I bet uninformed business owners and sales teams would be impressed by Ribbit for Salesforce’s new audio solution for integrating data, mobile phones, and voice automation into one scalable solution. The new features will allow users to call clients via the Internet from within the application, automatically storing a log and voice mail transcripts, call in notes for easy reporting on-the-go instead of typing updates later, attach messages to records (contacts, opportunities, etc) and the one I like the most is the cool automated voice to text feature giving users an option to scan and read a voice message rather than having to listen to long-winded time wasters. Ted Griggs, Ribbit's cofounder and CEO said "…What it (the world) needs is a new kind of phone company, one that liberates voice from its current confines -- devices, plans and business models -- and more readily integrates into the work flow of our professional and personal lives." said.

That being said, perhaps the way to educate potential customers on the advantages of VoIP is to share the liberating experience and the new added features cost savings benefits. Additionally, VoIP companies can solve the VoIP ignorance issue by teaming up and creating ad campaigns to educate the masses. One Goal, educate and sell more VoIP. Create educational campaigns and include sticky visually compelling video, generate white papers and other tutorials and post them on sites like voipreview.org and thedigest.com then place a link in a company wide newsletter to the campaign, create a company wide contest to see who can get the word out. Voila, you’ve got yourself a viral marketing and education campaign. My challenge goes out to all VoIP companies to see who can create the simplest yet interesting message with One Goal, educate and sell more VoIP.

VoIP communication is just starting to heat up in the hearts and minds of the average American. Perhaps it’s time to give a little VoIP 101 to Mom and Pop's out there in the good ole U S of A.