Customers are doing it for themselves

Tired of mass marketing, product development without consultation, retailer supremacy and being asked to take part in tedious and irrelevant surveys customers are taking things into their own hands. They are ‘following’ brands they like, co-creating new products, buying through whatever distribution channel gives them what they want in a cost effective and convenient way and sharing customer reviews.

Problem is, with a few notable exceptions, brands have not kept up and Marketers are still banging the old drums!

True Insight is allowing customers to tell us what they want to tell us when they want to tell us and how they want to tell us. Anything else is just false validation.

If you ask a customer a question, chances are they will oblige you with an answer (especially if you're paying them to! ) but this doesn’t tell you:

•  how much the topic/issue really matters to them (if at all)
•  what influence it will have on their buying behaviour (if any)
• what the words and phrases that you use really mean to them (if anything)

This means that a lot of money spent on collecting customer insight is currently wasted because it is asking about stuff that is not relevant, important or motivating for the customer

It is time that we turned flawed and dated approach on its head! The way in which customer insight will be gathered in the future will require us to do

•  Less talking and more listening
•  Less questioning and more elicitation
•  Less promoting and more responding
•  Less developing and more evolving
•  Less leading and more following

Customers have already taken the situation into their own hands and what remains now is for us swallow our pride, accept this and start playing by their rules not ours. Otherwise we will be joining the growing list of the  ‘ignored’ ‘removed’ and ‘unfollowed’!