Wise Marketers Listen To Their Customers

The classic marketing book “Integrated Marketing Communications” called recent times the age of marketing “empowerment.”  “Empowerment means people not only choose what they wish to listen to,” the authors wrote, “but also that they talk back and have the means to make themselves heard; wise rulers, those who keep their heads, hear and obey…”

The key for today’s marketer is to really “listen” to your customers and respond accordingly, i.e., “hear and obey.”  Every professional marketer knows you must gather information to understand your customers, their wants and needs, and what they expect from the marketer’s brand.  Gathering the information requires basic marketing research, and any good marketer can do it.  However, really hearing what the customers say and obeying is another question.

The Council of Public Relations Firms agrees.  As a recent Council blog declared:  “Today, customer feedback is easier than ever to come by, and experts and observers have encouraged companies to engage in real dialog with customers instead of just talking customers’ ears off.  But are we really listening?”

With the feedback and analytics afforded by the Internet, it is easier than ever to track what customers are saying, but that doesn’t mean companies are really listening.  For example, the Council reports, “one survey found that 70% of travel companies don’t track customer behavior or subscriber preferences to serve more useful marketing.”

A prime example of wise listening to customers is Walmart.  The giant retailer polls hundreds of thousands of its customers monthly by directing them to its website from its stores. This is part of Walmart’s effort to put marketing “at the forefront of championing the customer internally.”  As Walmart executives explain, “Every store actually gets a significant number of customers to respond about their experience, and therefore, the data we capture is valid store by store, and it is actionable, because precisely customers are telling us how they feel about their individual store.”  If, like Walmart, you take action (i.e., obey) on what you hear, the results can be very rewarding.

Listening gives you actionable information that:

·         Helps build an ongoing relationship with customers.

·         Allows you to discover problem areas or mistakes you have been making.

·         Creates sales opportunities.

·         Overall, builds customer loyalty.

Therefore, for the wise marketer, listening is critical to communications programs.

As Supreme Court Justice John Marshall once said, “to listen well is as powerful a means of communication and influence as to talk well.”

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