Listening to Customers, Fake Friends, and Consumer Behavior
Listen and Learn: What Are Your Customers Thinking?
If you don’t listen to your customers — really know them and understand them — you can’t build a valued relationship. Many brands wrongly believe that selling consists mostly of pitching a product, a solution, or an idea. In fact, the most important part of selling is listening to the customer, especially after you’ve asked a question. Your products and services are only important when they solve problems. Looking at what your customer values and identifying their needs can create enormous traction and engagement for your marketing. Listening helps shape the strategy that solves their problems.
Buying Fake Friends.
You may think all those likes and friends that drive Instagram or Facebook are real. They’re not. The enormous world of fake friends that ranges across most online areas is something that’s so deceiving that it even fools the media and advertisers. From surveys to likes, everything can be purchased online from sites that recruit microworkers. There is a going rate for buying fake followers and, as the AdWeek article below details, it’s not much. Take a look at this website to see how, for less than a dollar, you can buy just about anyone:
Online Behavior Shifts That Are Driving Customer Experiences.
Marketing is about one key thing – connecting to the right customer, discovering what they want, and selling to them. In many ways, 2020-22 marked a change in how digitalization impacted both individuals and businesses. Consumers have adjusted the ways they live and work and have fully recognized the online world of engagement with more insistent demands for service and quality. Delivering on those consumer preferences has become the new business battleground. Now, online, real-time engagement even in the B2B market is essential. Here are some really interesting findings from a Forbes Technology Council article.
Digital investment is an essential part of an effective marketing plan. You need to know what consumers think and want and keep your focus on the connection to your most valued customers.
The Three Big Shifts in Online Engagement
1 – Real-time event-driven communication is essential.
More than 40% of consumers now use live web chat, making it the most popular channel. They expect questions answered and information provided in real-time. The option of sending back an email or responding by phone is something from the past now. This is true for B2B engagement as well. Relationships that keep the customer engaged and educated about their buying decisions have an advantage.
2 – Digital is here to stay.
67% of consumers are willing to pay more for better service. Service is about time and value. Expectations only grew through the pandemic as consumers went online for almost all their purchases. In the business world, the Zoom meeting is now the standard. Instead of planning an in-person meeting with your client and your team, which could take a week of coordination, plus travel time, the Zoom meeting can be set up the same day with people in multiple locations and time zones to keep the client engaged on the progress or your work. This expectation is not going away.
3 – Values matter more than ever.
In the consumer world, what you stand for or support with your brand matters to consumers. Issues related to the environment, sustainability, and social impact are in the background of their thinking as they make purchases and look at brands. This does not mean you’re disingenuous or creating values that are not authentic to your company, it means you must seriously look at what matters to your customers and what your brand stands for. Integrating these values into the marketing of your products is now an expected component of brand value.