We keep saying that everything is changing. You can make your own list, but here’s some of the things we think all companies should think about:
1. We are all used to an enormous amount of noise and competition for attention. We are entertained and distracted by hundreds of TV channels, picture and video sharing, millions of podcasts, books on tape, millions of blogs, streaming radio, pocket-sized MP3 players with 3000 CDs stored on them. I could add to this list for ten pages. Everyone can see everything immediately and anything can be found. Your audience is the entire world, and everyone wants to talk to them at once.
2. It’s not your market. The customers own the market. Your share is a measure of what happened yesterday. Yes, there’s inertia or Microsoft probably couldn’t exist, but there’s far less friction then there used to be when information was in the control of people who could rent big printing presses. Most of the information flow today is outside the control of anyone. The most effective control anyone has managed to date is to search for it (Google, Yahoo, MSN). I recently tried to find the best phone to integrate with my wife’s new car. The car manufacturer’s information was obsolete and the cell companies are clueless. I found information I could act on in forums and blogs. In other words the millions that these billion dollar companies spent on marketing was trumped completely by conversations costing nothing.
3. They aren’t your conversations. You can join conversations about your products and your industry, but they never belong to you — even if you own the platform (blog, forum, social network, etc.) and start the topics. If you try to control them, they go elsewhere.
Marketing is two-way conversations. As a marketer you really need to start listening. I know the last thing you need is one more responsibility, but the only way to be an effective marketer today is to listen to the conversations about your company and your products. You should be on the the blogs and forums that complain about your customer service, the battery life of your product, the size of the rear bumper, the fuel efficiency.
You should listen to the people who complain and the people who praise. Somewhere in your company there should be someone who ACTIVELY calms the disgruntled and promotes the evangelists that love your products. Why companies don’t do this today is beyond me, but it will be standard practice soon.
The noise means that old fashioned shouting and interruption doesn’t work anymore, the lack of information control means you can’t even command attention that way. Even traditional approaches that remain effective for initiating conversations (like direct mail) work best when the conversations continue.
comments
I t’s like the children’s game, SIMON SAYS.
SIMON SAYS CLOSE YOUR EARS.
then when Simon says something else to do — the kids do it —
they haven’t closed their ears.
Both listening — and not listening can be active choices.
(And when Bill Babcock speaks, I benefit from listening.)
From your remarks I also infer that listening is simply part of good relationship management, another neglected area. And without that, you don’t move things ahead, things like decisions, purchases, creation, progress.
So active listening is a driver of both organizational and collaborative growth.
PAUL K SMITH :: May 30th, 2007
I think it is interesting that we still equate listening and hearing as the same thing. It seems to me that the noise Bill speaks of is something we hear so much, so often, with such permiation that it has honestly become the bacground from which most of us (consumers) think we are gathering our true information.
What is it that keeps consumers from stopping….anti-hearing so to speak. What type of disruptive technology is it that could possibly be applied to compelling someone to tune out….before they tune in?
I think it has to be unexpected, life altering and irrefutable - and must occur way way above the din in a fully and uniquely distinguishable manner.
For example, sometimes, just when you believe it is safe to change lanes, because you have checked your mirrors, looked behind you, done your diligence….you get that last minute HONK! Your reality changes because the reality you belived you were “tuned In” turned out not to be someone elses reality.
What is in our blind spot Bill? That is the question.
wayne-o :: October 24th, 2007
No post in almost a year? So much for innovation and new thinking…;)
Jack Ellston :: March 19th, 2008
Actually, Jack I semi-retired from the company. You’ll find lots of innovation and new thinking from the great people who are running it now.
Billb :: May 15th, 2008
As a former marketer and current programmer, I found this pretty fascinating. A remarkable insight. Marketers used to be able to control the public’s perceptions of a product directly through advertising. Now, people fast forward through the ads with TIVOs, click on the x’s to get rid of the advertising and just generally discount anything that advertisers have to say. We expect to be lied to; the internet has made cynics of us all.
Now we go to each other, to the almost faceless internet hoard for most of our information on everything. We assume that there will be plenty of bad information, but that we can sift out the bad by counting which pieces are repeated the most often, and evaluating the “trustworthiness” of the source.
It’s an interesting phenomenon, but if I read an ad making a claim about a product I’ll immediately discard it, whereas if that claim is made by a “real” person, in a blog or Q & A or some other “unstaged” event, I would be more likely to believe it even if I knew that the claimant worked for the company making the product.
If a person is willing to stand up and be honest about who he is, to take personal responsibility for his claims, I’m more willing to credit him with honesty in regards to the content of his claim.
And having people who represent the company and their products participate in community discussion on those products certainly gives the impression that the company is listening to its customers (and potential customers), and that it is receptive to their problems.
This perceived receptiveness will, in turn, make the listeners view the company more positively, as well as offering insights that a savvy manager can use to improve a company’s products, and a clever marketer can incorporate into his presentation of the product.
Francine Taylor :: April 21st, 2009
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