Marketing: I Hear You
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Written by Jeff Eberlein   
Monday, 31 December 2007
Marketing: I Hear You - American Executive - RedCoat Publishing
Can marketing to today’s cynical, overloaded consumers be as simple as learning to listen?
The advertising dollar is shrinking. There—the cat’s out of the bag. And why does that matter? Because the shrinking ad dollar forces those of us in the marketing business to listen—really listen—to what our target audiences are saying.

Marketing: I Hear You - American Executive - RedCoat Publishing To say that advertising dollars are diminishing is an oversimplification. But it is, nonetheless, an effective way to describe recent changes in marketing culture and the new challenges being faced by corporations and their agencies worldwide. Since the early part of this decade, numerous world events have conspired to make consumers more cynical and suspicious. Gone are the gilded days of the 1980s and ’90s when we all felt insulated from the world’s struggles. Gone are the fat, happy times when consumers banked on the promise of future prosperity to finance immediate desire.

Gone, too, is much of the innocence of the American consumer. We are surrounded by conflicting, often confusing, messages regarding everything from the cost of produce to issues of world security. Thanks to the Internet and 24-hour television programming, information flies about like insects on a calm summer evening. Some of it bites. Some of it doesn’t. Unfortunately, we seldom know which is which until we start itching.

Where does that leave those of us who must communicate in meaningful ways with skeptical consumers to justify our livelihoods? As corporate advertising dollars decrease, we in the marketing business are being called on with increasing urgency to make intelligent decisions with marketing budgets. Easy, right? Maybe. Maybe not. It all depends on how well we listen to our current and prospective customers.

It’s a simple concept. In all other facets of our lives (marriage, parenthood, school, work relationships) good listening skills almost always pave a direct path toward success. Yet the concept of translating listening skills into marketing success often seems to evade even the most gifted of marketers.

Listening requires an investment
For our clients, we’ve consistently preached the gospel of research. Surprisingly, research remains one of the most commonly rejected budget items in any marketing program. It’s intangible and often perceived as being expensive. It can be tough to justify unless a company has seen for itself the benefits of consumer research. Good research, however, is invaluable.

Consumers are more demanding now. Not only do they want to know your company is hearing them, they want you to take what you’re hearing and turn it into meaningful messages that resonate with them on a variety of levels. Without conducting quality consumer research both before and after a marketing campaign, how can we be sure our messages are reaching our target audiences?

Listening takes time
Your amazing, paradigm-shifting product goes into production next week. It’ll hit store shelves nationwide two months after that. You have almost a million dollars in your marketing budget to move the product out of the stores and into your customers’ hands. Do you know what those customers want and need to hear to make your new product a success?

Well, for starters, you should have asked yourself this question a year ago. Good marketing requires customer input. Gathering customer input and weaving that input into a strategic plan takes time. Isn’t it worth the time if that research keeps your company from wasting its resources on newspaper advertising by revealing that your target audience gets most of its relevant product information from the Internet? Isn’t it worth the time if you discover that the product attribute you intended to feature most prominently in your marketing materials doesn’t matter much to your target audience?

Unfortunately, many companies are so concerned with getting a product or service into the public eye quickly that they lose their strategic focus. When long-term strategic planning gets thrown out the window, consumer opinion goes with it. Inevitably, especially given the current climate of consumer cynicism, a company’s potential for success follows close behind.

Listening can be scary
Listening to customers often takes us into uncharted territory, and it can be downright frightening sometimes. Listening sometimes requires even the most successful of companies to admit they’re wrong. That can be a bitter pill to swallow. But consider the alternative.

Your company has invested millions of dollars into developing a product and preparing sales channels for national distribution. What if the research tells you that consumers no longer want the product? Your customers have just torpedoed several months, or even years, worth of work. But they’ve also saved you millions of dollars in production, packaging, merchandising, and marketing costs.

Developing a product, putting it on shelves, and throwing a few ads behind it feels safe. It’s a known quantity. But it’s also a marketing approach that became obsolete the minute American consumers started asking tough questions. The old philosophy of “if we shout about it loud enough, it will sell” no longer applies.

The light at the end of the listening tunnel
The re-direction of our focus toward the real wants and needs of the consumer puts a lot of new demands on marketers, to be sure. But it also opens up opportunities to reach audiences and enables us to flex our creative muscles in exciting and gratifying ways.

Modern research into consumer behavior, coupled with rapid advancements in technology, has given us powerful marketing vehicles that didn’t even exist at the beginning of this decade: podcasts, online communities and blogs, viral video, and more. Ironically, those same advancements have also made it easier, and often less expensive, to listen to our customers.

Online survey services, for example, have given us the ability to instantaneously gather feedback from our current and future consumers. Even something as simple as monitoring activity on an online discussion forum, while not to be considered a free substitute for real research, can provide valuable clues to what issues are on the minds of our customers.

Indeed, nowadays, there’s virtually no valid excuse for not opening our ears to the voices of our consumers. Gathering information is easier than ever before. Opening our minds to the opportunities our customer feedback presents us is sometimes tougher, but that’s the more important piece of the puzzle. And it’s the key to unlocking the often elusive tangible results and return on investment that marketers covet.

After all, information without perspective and a response is just so many words on a page. Marketers who are able to both listen and respond, those who give their research and their audience a soul, are the ones who will ultimately position their companies and their clients for successful, meaningful long-term consumer relationships.

Jeff Eberlein is managing partner at Strata-G Communications, a full-service integrated marketing agency based in Cincinnati. He can be reached at (513) 381-8855 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it
 
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