Are You Telling Your Customers What They Want to Hear?

You may have developed the best marketing campaign in the world, but if you haven’t taken the time to understand how your customer is going to react, you could be wasting your efforts. Are your customers engaged? Are they truly interested in what you have to offer, no matter how nicely you package it?

In short, are they paying attention? Or are they passing by, unaware of how you could improve their lives?

Take a ten-minute drive through any city centre, and you’ll encounter hundreds of marketing messages—from special promotions in shop windows, posters at bus stops and billboards to digital signs and branded t-shirts. The truth is, you’re likely to ignore 99% of these attempts to grab your attention as you go about your day, perhaps lost in thought or listening to your favourite song.

Why? Because most of those advertising soundbites aren’t relevant to you at that moment. You may be interested in a two-for-one deal at the deli later when you’re hungry, or you might want to buy a new car when your current one finally gives up. You could even be keen to join a health club come the New Year when fitness is top of mind again. But until you have a pressing need—like a leaky tap making you notice plumbers’ vans—these ads don’t resonate with you.

This is the problem: most marketing campaigns tell customers what the business wants them to hear, not what the customer wants to hear.

Stop Telling Your Customers What You Want Them to Hear

Start telling them what they want to hear!

To get this right, you need to stand in your customer’s shoes. If you want to run an effective marketing campaign, the key is understanding your customer’s needs, not just assuming they care about the same things you do.

Let’s consider a few simple examples:

• You think the unique selling point (USP) of your new car is the comfortable driver’s seat and premium music system. But your customer is more concerned with reducing their weekly fuel costs.
• You love the sleek design of your new mobile phone range. Your customer, however, just wants reliable coverage that won’t drop when they need it most.
• You believe your new flea treatment for cats is the most effective on the market. Your customer wants a solution that’s easy to apply without getting scratched by their cat in the process.

Are You Telling Your Customers What They Want to Hear?

This is the crux of any successful marketing campaign: understanding what your customer really wants and delivering it.

For big players like Amazon, this involves using complex algorithms that track customer behaviour, offering similar products based on purchase history and patterns. For SMEs, without the vast resources of larger businesses, it’s a matter of discovering more about your customers through direct engagement.

How to Find Out What Your Customers Want

Here’s where it gets interesting. To truly understand your customers, you need to ask the right questions and use the right tools.

1. Use your intuition: If you’ve been in business for a while, you may already have a gut feeling about what your customers want. However, intuition can sometimes be a false friend, so it’s important to back it up with data.
2. Collect data through market research: This can reveal invaluable insights into your customers’ buying behaviours, preferences and underlying needs. Surveys, polls and customer feedback forms are a great starting point.
3. Utilise customer service interactions: Your customer service team is a goldmine of information. They are on the front line, hearing directly from customers about what they love—and what they don’t.
4. Run focus groups: This allows you to gather direct feedback and engage with your target audience to better understand their wants and needs.

Understanding Your Customer is Key

Whichever method you choose, it’s all about discovering what your customer really wants to hear. Putting yourself in your customer’s shoes enables you to develop more meaningful, relevant and successful marketing campaigns.

In today’s crowded marketplace, it’s not enough to shout louder than everyone else—you need to speak to your customers in a way that makes them stop, listen and engage.

Are you telling your customers what they want to hear?