Historically, electrical manufacturers have increased market share by producing exceptional products with exceptional service. Today, unprecedented Web access via mobile apps allow electronic consumers to look under the hood of your content management system and kick the “content” of your Website before determining whether to order, all the while doing so under time and budget constraints. While glamorous graphics and turbocharged taglines sell products, today’s savvy customers can conduct research in a few clicks of a mouse or touches on a screen to see what they’re really getting.
Content can be how-to articles or videos. It can be a catalog of products, company history, testimonials, peer reviews, or interviews. It can be one library or several libraries depending on your architecture, but no matter how prodigious your content is, it must offer real-time, real-world solutions to what customers need.
The Interpower content found in the articles of InfoPower and Connections assist customers, industry peers, and electrophiles in keeping current with changing standards, directives, requirements and approvals whether they come from UL, CSA, VDE, IEC or RoHS, or the Council of the European Union. And a host of others. The content also provides comprehensive insights from how to export country-specific electrical cord sets and components to calculating cord length or voltage drop. It highlights how different manufacturing processes work such as cabling and ultrasonic welding as well as the rigorous testing procedures per a given agency standard.
“Our customers reach out to us for solutions to ease their pain,” says Ralph Bright, Interpower’s Vice President of Marketing. “Whether it’s shipping delays, material shortages, or complex standards and directives, our goal is to provide customers with electrical knowledge in multiple formats. Our videos, e-newsletters, blogs, and whitepapers make that knowledge readily available.”
Interpower content is encyclopedic (https://www.interpower.com/ic/), offering articles, videos, Webcasts, whitepapers, and even a virtual tradeshow. It’s worth repeating one content maxim which has withstood the test of time: unbiased with biased content should focus on customer solutions. Worrying whether your content is too biased may distract your focus away from what customers demand—solutions for their electrical designs. If your product is the only solution for the customer, you should include that into your content.
Does your content instruct, educate, and provide updates to the customer whether it’s exporting cord sets to Europe, or excessive cord length that’s causing high levels of EMI? Can customers click on a video to watch how cable is made, or watch a video of an actual UL 817 Abrupt Removal Test? What about videos and Webcasts where the CEO and other officers and experts offer invaluable knowledge and advice? Or third-party videos presenting a more neutral perspective?
By clicking on InfoPower or Connections on the Interpower Website, customers can read timely articles from the current state of gridlocked logistics to NEMA hospital-grade cord sets and the rigorous testing those cord sets are put through. Or if equipment is flush against a wall, maybe the eight-angled NEMA cord should be on their reading list. InfoPower and Connections archives date back almost a decade, each one geared to introduce and educate the customer on electrical cord sets and components. Those publications also announce updates such as the arrival of a new or amended standard, requirement, or directive.
Besides expert advice on correct voltages and amperages, optimum cord length, EMI shielding or Accessory Power, a few clicks can take you directly into product pages that display detailed specifications such as part numbers, measurements, metals and resins used, schematic drawings, approvals, environmental requirements, and available quantities. And much more.
Once at the Website: https://www.interpower.com/ic/, hovering your cursor over the “Products” and “Product Design Library” tabs, one click can transport you into a goldmine of information—the entire site is searchable from word search to part number. There, you will find helpful charts and graphs, and country-specific standards our customers and industry peers need to know when exporting electrical products. Colorful photographs lend deeper context to the descriptions, and white papers are one click away via QR codes.
Interpower content has been perused by many of the largest companies in the world. So why not offer a blended approach of unbiased and biased content that is easily navigated by the consumer? Give them the freedom to peruse product pages or technical and industry-related articles. After all, if your product is the perfect fit, they may wind up clicking on just one Website. Yours.