You Talkin’ to Me? Posted on June 28, 2008 Post a comment

The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part. - Jack Handey, Deep Thoughts

In marketing, as in life, listening is often an underused tool. Successful communication has two parts—both sending and receiving. As brands, we send messages to consumers every single day. But how often do we really listen to consumers?

The notion of engaging consumers in a true dialogue really began again* in the 1990s. Customer Relationship Management (CRM), as it is called, grew out of the disciplined database marketing approaches to customer engagement. Every customer interaction could be catalogued and that information mined to garner insight into future customer interactions. By “listening” to consumer data, brands could develop much more effective and relevant marketing programs.

But even more important, the enormous success of search engines like Google and Yahoo! ushered in a completely new era of listening for marketers. With effective search engine marketing, brands have the opportunity to offer a solution to a consumer’s need at exactly the right time—when the consumer is asking for it. Also, with content-based advertising, companies can listen without even being present. Advertisements utilizing this technology can be delivered to a consumer’s page based solely on the user’s chosen Web content. Not only is search a brilliant way to find prospects through search engine optimization, it also offers enormous potential for a brand to deliver information, highlight product benefits, and offer exceptional service to help close the sale.

In marketing today, it is stunningly apparent that the benefit to brands listening directly to consumers is at least as important as talking to them. If you’re not listening, you’re missing out.

* I say “began again” in the 1990s, because it has been rightly pointed out that dialogues between customers and shopkeepers, for example, have for ages been an integral part of doing business. It is only relatively recently (i.e., the last fifty years) that mass marketing has emerged as the predominant marketing approach.