Here comes some of the art. I think this is at the heart of making marketing more meaningful--not just meeting expectations, but blowing them out of the water. I love that there is so much focus on listening to customers. But I wish there was as much attention among marketers on how to do it. In other words, how to interpret and then act on it. I have simplified this to three basic scenarios for customer listening based on what a marketer is trying to do.
Serving Customer Needs
What do customers like about a product? What isn't working? What features are they asking for? What are they complaining about? Even the mere act of creating a place for customers to express their opinions is important to respecting them. People who generously give of their own time to let you know insights about your product as they use it deserve to be heard. Part of building a relationship with them is hearing their feedback, acting on it and making sure they know it.
Leading Product Innovation
"It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them", a quote from Steve Jobs. Customers will not literally tell us what to do when it comes to new product development. This fact can be so hard to accept if you are really listening and respecting customers. As Henry Ford said, "If I had asked customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."
Customer insight is critical to the development of a new product, but may need to come from stepping back and taking a wider lens shot of what customer needs are beyond the immediate category you are working in and that customers are accustomed to seeing you in. There is an iconic story about the railroad industry struggling when they kept focusing on making trains and the important reorientation to seeing they were really in the business of moving people. Theodore Levitt wrote about this in one of marketing's iconic, must-read case studies Marketing Myopia.
I think leading product innovation also involves learning to live and breathe your customer so that you create an intuition about them. That intuition combined with the time, expertise and resources a marketer brings can mix to help anticipate what a customer will need in a category. It also takes some fearlessness to make that guess and the ability to test, listen to learn, and change rapidly once you make that intuitive step. Co-creation with thought-leading customers is another way to involve their voice along the way--as they use this new product while you are creating it.
The risk of not focusing on customer needs at all when you are building new stuff is a solution in search of a problem. I have seen several times really cool technologies where the developers are looking for a real-world application and then eventually a business model to make money. A good test of customer insight at the heart of an innovation is being able to answer the following questions in less than 10 words: What important problem does this solve for what customer? Why is this better than what they use today?
Creating Communications
I worked with a great consumer marketer who insisted on starting all marketing communications with a guiding customer insight. She defined it as: a forward-looking, fundamental truth that connects with your customers and your brand. The guiding insight is informed from customer research, as well as a connection to a brand's promise.
The Dove Campaign for Real Beauty is such a perfect example. Dove's history of natural ingredients fit beautifully with the insight they surfaced that many women have insecurities about airbrushed ideals of beauty everywhere in magazines, movies and more.
Another favorite example of mine is the "Got Milk?" campaign. The California Milk Processor Board found themselves being displaced by sodas and the multitude of new drink options. Milk is a commodity. They lost share. They felt price pressure. Healthy messages weren't working. But what if milk went away? They asked research participants to go without milk for a few days: no milk for cereal, no milk to feed children, no milk for coffee. People didn't realize how important milk was until it wasn't there. This was at the heart of their very successful campaign and the Aaron Burr Got Milk ad.
The guiding insight is where customer research turns the corner into communications strategy and planning. A guiding insight is based on something we choose from a multitude of things we hear. Across all three of these scenarios, the voice of the customer is such an important input and part of the joy of what we do, but customers won't do our jobs for us. That's why we're here.
Pat,
ReplyDeleteTo dovetail on the creating communications section - one of the reasons I think both the Dove and Got Milk? campaigns both resonated so well was that in addition to seeing insights about their customers, they made their customers the heroes in both pieces. People celebrating their natural beauty or celebrating their healthy habits was lifted up as a positive thing existing and potential customers could aspire to.
And you're right, it went beyond the product-specific to category specific (buying a product that makes me feel good about the way I look just the way I am/ buying a product that is healthy for me).
It's also telling that in both categories - beauty and food - there's so many 'me-too' marketing campaigns echoing these...another example that one marketer's risk-taking paved the way for others.
-Ann
Your post could not be more timely. We are designing our digital experience for prospects and asking ourselves the same questions. Its a bit harder in digital because audiences are fragmented. Nevertheless, we have to listen better but also execute against the insights better. I heard Gary Hishberg, CE- Yo of Stonyfield farms speak to small business owners recently. His argument for organic posits around health but said that was fueled by insight in focus groups that people cared about the next generation more, i.e they wanted better health, environment, nutrition for their kids and the planet. Stonyfield capitalized on this insight. I say Stonyfield and you say ‘wow, great brand marketing’. SF is great at brand marketing. But the best part – they skimp on mass media advertising and save their margins. Instead they do work in areas that get them the most bang for their buck like word-of-mouth marketing, referrals, advocacy and eco-sustaining philanthropy.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.stonyfield.com/healthy-planet/our-roadmap-green-business
They have a great loyalty program because they invest the time and effort in their consumers – mostly women too. They have their own buzz blog – sometimes cows blog and tweet too (clever marketing).
http://www.stonyfield.com/blog/
Also check out their latest campaign – getting the FDA to mandate companies to label products that are genetically engineered.
http://justlabelit.org/
They do some print ads – but only in niche media like kids health magazines. So they don’t have huge advertising budgets and SF' s net margins are the highest in the category. They pass this on to the consumers, organic farmers and the community.
I was already a fan of SF, now I am an advocate. And they are such a strong brand because they take the time to listen to their consumers and listen right and act on it right.
So, yes Pat genius insight in this piece again.
- Reshma Khan aka Abd-Allah on Blogger.