Friday, October 14, 2011

Marketing is in the eye of the buyer

     Again, I find myself straddling the world of company and consumer. I think it is especially salient in my chosen path of marketing, which often takes on the role of the “voice of the customer”, within an organization. Even marketing professionals forget to take a step back and ask…

How does this affect our customers? (Who are, by the way, the life blood of every company.)

      In an age where marketing is moving toward a conversation between company and customer, this question is more important than ever. No longer does a shotgun approach work. Customers are inundated with information and the only way to cut through the clutter is to be relevant. Increasingly customers want to know; what can this company do for me?
       The recent Netflix case, referenced in an earlier post, is a classic example of a company being internally focused and forgetting to think about their customers.


       My former organization had a similar issue of loosing sight of our members. Every department wanted to market their program or publication to a point were members were receiving 4-5 emails a DAY about offerings they may or may not be interested in. As you can imagine, customers in the better case scenario cared enough to complain, and in the worse case,  completely tuned us out and didn’t renew their membership the following year.
       Losing sight of the customer can be as simple as using marketing ploys or company lingo when interacting with them. An example: asking a customer how many SKUs they prefer in a category when conducting market research is pointless as the vast majority of consumers will have no idea what an SKU is.

For marketers and other business professionals, I recommend four simple steps for keeping customers top of mind;

  1. Use the grandma test. Run your marketing research or campaign against your grandma (or someone external to marketing/the company) and see if they understand what you are asking or trying to get across.
  2. Use your data. Technology today allows for increasingly personal interaction with customers. I am always amazed by companies who fail to use what they have available to make information as relevant as possible. 
  3. Appreciate complaints. If a customer cares enough to complain, listen and take actions.
  4.  Finally, and most pointedly, there is no better way to understand the customer then to be one. If this is not possible, I believe every employee should serve on the frontlines of customer service on a reoccurring basis and hear first hand what customers think and feel. 

      New companies or products are successful because they address an unmet customer need. Fundamentally, companies are built with the customer in mind. Yet it seems the larger companies grow, the further from mind serving the customer becomes. I would argue that the level at which a company keeps the customer in mind directly relates to its longevity and long-term success.

Alyssa Thomas
Posted by at

3 comments:

  1. BEM 325October 19, 2011 at 9:27 PM

    I definitely agree that this is an age that consumers want to feel they can speak to the companies they work with. Netflix really dropped the ball with that last big scandal, but it looks like they finally listened.

    One thing I would probably add to your list is to ensure that once you engage with customers, you have to be prepared to show that you are listening to them. The reason I say this is because I remember the day Netflix made its crazy announcement about Qwikster, the CEO Reed Hastings decided to go on his Facebook account and talk with customers about the decision.

    He spent the entire day, hundreds of responses to thousands of customer posts, trying to convince people why the Qwikster idea was good one. And this infuriated people, because he just wasn't listening. And even if he did hear the overwhelming negative customer response, he was so set on his purpose of convincing customers otherwise, he further proved to them that the company was simply putting its own priorities over those of its customers.

    So, I think it goes two ways: sure, it's a good idea to open up those channels and communicate with your customers, but not so that you can shove information down their throats. Companies also have to be prepared to listen to what their customers have to say, and, even more importantly, respond accordingly.

    ReplyDelete
  2. BEM 325October 19, 2011 at 9:28 PM

    ^ Forgot to sign my comment

    -
    Eric Wiggins

    ReplyDelete
  3. AnshumanOctober 20, 2011 at 6:22 PM

    Interesting to note one of the most obvious concepts of customer centricity and conformity in MBA classes might go unnoticed in an organizational set up.
    The senior management grows headstrong over time of its product oriented approach. Especially, if you don't see clear or imminent loss, its hard for senior management to realize that there's a possibility for higher gains, a possibility that customers want something different than/do not want at all the new product that they came out with.
    Even my conversation with Ms. Portia, the Global Marketing head at CCL, revealed the same insights about the resistance from the senior managers to deviate from the image of the brand they have in their mind (to put in jargon their brand vision).
    Most of the times it's even difficult to conduct a marketing research and objectively point out the discrepancy. However, industry like FMCG are very particular about this resistance and are more receptive to newer ideas and conduct frequent researches to test the hypotheses.
    Is it that over time successful marketers due to their confidence fall victim to marketing myopia themselves?

    ReplyDelete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)