Why Online Documentation Tools Are Marketing Assets

Ask any business owner if marketing plays a significant role in growing his or her firm, and the answer would be a resounding yes. 

Now ask whether documentation stands anywhere in the picture, and the reply would be a shocking No, except a few who might have realized its importance.

With the extent to which digital has percolated in the business ecosystem across the globe, documentation cannot be put on the backburner. Currently, the global internet penetration rate stands at 57% with North America and Northern Europe leading the chart.

To cater to the rapidly-increasing digital population, it’s best to add documentation tools to your marketing arsenal. 

They will give a fillip to your marketing efforts, helping you not just to sell more but also build long-lasting relationships with your prospects and customers. 

Documentation Tool: The Secret Marketing Weapon

Yes, documentation is a marketing weapon, but it doesn’t look like one. Sans marketing lingo, documentation is a genuine, real source of information whose primary purpose is to help prospects and customers. Don’t mistake it with a marketing copy that may contain over-the-top information that can be misleading at times. Unlike other marketing materials, documentation is genuine, transparent, and presents a true picture of your product and brand. 

Today, the scope of marketing has broadened so much that it is no more restricted to shiny and colorful ads on television or newspapers. Digital dominance has altered the scenario, making space for online documentation. 

Let’s see how an online documentation generator can boost your marketing efforts:

#1 Attracts, Educates and Retains

A prospect looks out for a solution to a problem and bumps into your documentation on the web. He or she gets the answer, researches more about your product, get interested, and decides to either contact you first or go for the purchase directly. This is an ideal scenario. The situation can be completely opposite in case your documentation is not equipped with the right information. 

For existing customers, online documentation serves as a self-help platform, where they can find answers to their questions without going from pillar to post. No calls or emails, especially for trivial issues. The documentation platform makes your customers self-sufficient, ensuring that their queries are resolved at the earliest. 

At the time when people are looking for brands that are not just customer-focused but customer-committed, they want you to meet their sky-rocketing expectations for instant gratification. The click culture has made people impatient. 

In fact, research by HubSpot has confirmed that – “90% of customers rate an “immediate” response as important or very important when they have a customer service question. 60% of customers define “immediate” as 10 minutes or less.“

The documentation builder leverages this aspect by empowering customers with self-help so that whatever they need is just a scroll away.

Read More: Best Software Documentation Tools You Can Consider in 2023

Key Takeaway: Well-crafted documentation plays an enormous role in wooing new customers, retaining the existing ones, and increasing conversions.

Look at how the ProProfs Knowledge Base helped Descartes Systems, a Germany-based organization in creating online documentation that provides excellent help to its end users. 

Challenge: Till 2014, the company used a different tool for end-user documentation. It was complicated to use and outdated. Article categorization was a challenge. Its search mechanism was not that powerful, and editing articles was a task. It was when things went beyond control that the company shifted to ProProfs Knowledge Base software. 

The solution offered by ProProfs: ProProfs Knowledge Base software helped the firm create online documentation where different teams can contribute knowledge and review one another’s articles. This made sure that only relevant and quality content was published. 

Result: Its end-users are happy and satisfied as finding information and resolving queries is no more a challenge for them.

Watch this video to understand how you can create online documentation in minutes:

#2 Elevates Brand Visibility

Right from the dawn of the web till today when internet penetration is at its peak, it’s pretty clear that the online space is a battlefield. Here you need to constantly prove your worth and be in the limelight to gain attention. 

The question here is how to achieve this level of visibility on the web?

Optimizing your documentation for search engines is the best way to go about it. Adopting SEO strategies that are focused around keywords, meta tags, and meta descriptions can help you achieve a higher rank on search engines. You can even try to get your online document placed in the Google Knowledge Graph by creating unique and accurate content.

Inter-linking relevant articles in your document is also helpful in optimizing your content. Go through leading web influencer Neil Patel’s article on Internal Linking to understand how it’s beneficial for SEO. 

Key Takeaway: Have an SEO strategy in place. It will help you improve your documentation and enhance its visibility on the web. Also, make it a practice to share your documentation across various social media platforms. It will fuel your online presence, helping you attain top-of-the-mind brand recall.

#3 Increases Sales

Yes, you heard it right! A carefully-crafted, meticulously-structured, densely-linked, and information-rich online document can push your sales figures by a significant number.

As discussed above, online document increases your online visibility, which naturally impacts your readership. More the number of prospects; higher will be your chances of a sale happening. Giving prospects a 24*7 accessible information source in the form of a cloud-based document helps them address their concerns, do the pre-purchase research, and make the buying decision faster.

 Let alone the frustration, imagine the amount of time and effort it takes to seal a deal both for sales reps and prospects on calls or emails. Online documentation keeps these issues at bay, expediting the sales process, and growing your revenue substantially. 

Online documentation plays a significant role in increasing sales by:

• building confidence about the brand in potential customers
• providing complete information about your products
• demonstrating how your product works
• keeping visitors engaged
• creating opportunities for up-selling or cross-selling

Key Takeaway: Online documentation also allows you to pitch new products to your customers while explaining the current one to them. Leverage this opportunity to pitch your entire product suite to the visitors.

#4 Builds Communities

Documentation breeds engagement. It allows customers to interact with your brand directly and also initiate conversations among themselves regarding your products and services. 

Don’t treat documentation as a problem-solving platform only. It’s much more than that. It forms the basis of customer interactions which can go as wide as different social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to phone calls and emails.

A happy customer can share your document on a forum or social media platform to spark conversation. This makes your online document a source to help other people who are grappling with similar issues.

Key Takeaway: Leverage documentation to boost customer congregation and community building. This will widen your reach and bring more customers to your kitty.

#5 Identifies Customer Needs

Your online documentation comprises a wealth of valuable information to help your prospects and customers with problem-solving. But how do you know your document is performing well, meaning it’s doing what it’s meant to do and customers are happy with the service?

For this, you need to evaluate and drill down to know what customers want and are they actually getting it. An ideal online documentation maker offers insightful reports on the search pattern of customers, keywords used by them frequently, successful and failed searches, popular and poorly rated articles, most viewed articles, and much more. 

You can utilize this treasure trove of meaningful data to understand customer requirements and improve your documentation accordingly. 

For instance, if you know the chunk of keywords that are not yielding any results, try adding content relevant to those keywords. For articles that are not doing well, you can incorporate relevant keywords in those articles and improve the quality of content so that they provide some value to readers. 

Watch this video to understand how reports help in decoding the search behavior of customers and much more: 

Key Takeaway: Data is the new oil. Tap this valuable resource to understand your customers better, identify their needs, and provide suitable solutions.

 Get Smarter With Documentation Tools

Gone are the days of ‘Survival of the Fittest;’ the time today signals towards ‘Survival of the Smartest.’ Online marketing has to be dealt with smartly and sincerely, and that can happen when you are in tandem with the latest technological trends. One such trend that is catching up revolves around documentation tools that are becoming marketing assets, capable of catapulting you towards a positive growth trajectory.