There’s an old saying in marketing circles that your customer can tell you everything you need to know — if you ask the right questions.
When you’re doing customer research to plan or assess the effectiveness of your marketing campaign, it helps to know what to listen for — and how to steer a conversation to get to the important stuff. Read More
Given all the listening we do, you’d think we’d be good at it. Statistics show otherwise. According to Forbes.com, we remember only 25 – 50% of what we hear. That means when we talk to our boss, colleagues, customers or spouse for 10 minutes, we’re really hearing anywhere from 2 ½ to 5 minutes of the conversation. But fine-tuning your listening skills can be very beneficial to your marketing efforts. The better you listen, the better you’ll understand what the customer has to say about your product or your strategy — and the better marketing outcomes you’ll ultimately achieve. Read More
Sure, companies want to know that their marketing efforts are going to succeed before they begin. Analytic minds want logic to justify their investment. The reality is, that’s not always possible because sometimes quantitative analysis just isn’t practical.
But that doesn’t have to mean you can’t be decisive. Just as we firmly believe that emotion plays a huge part in b2b purchasing behavior, we also recognize the role human insight can play in knowing the right thing to do when it comes to marketing a product or service. Read More
It’s never a good idea to go to the grocery store hungry. But how about to the Internet? Most, if not all of us, have been on the precipice of launching or refreshing a Web site, and what better place to go looking for ideas than the Internet chock full of Web sites—nearly 47 million new ones in 2009 alone. Bad idea. Read More