Ateya Qureshi

Listening – The Missing Link of Marketing

December 7th, 2010 by Ateya Qureshi

Gone are the days when people used to think about marketing as a one-way channel, where businesses would invest in various avenues, hoping to see returns by gaining more customers without any way to measure actual performance. The web has had a huge impact on the way marketing has evolved. Consumer interests are tracked in a constant (silent) two-way communication.

Tracking
Web tracking is getting more and more intrusive as tracking gets smarter. It is not a coincidence when mortgage rate comparisons show up on the ad bar of the screen as one is trying to refinance. The information gained as a result of tracking is considered as marketing gold because it allows businesses to invest their marketing money where it is most profitable.

Web Tracking Ecosystem (source: WSJ)

Listening
Businesses show increasing interest in web tracking to learn about their customers. However, David Jackson, Founder of Clicktools, thinks that the listening aspect of business is often ignored in an effort to push marketing on the customers. He writes,

“Marketing is a dialogue but the listening part is often the poor relation to the desire to get ‘the message’ out. Just look at budgets and what is spent on listening vs. other marketing communications.”

In a world where marketing managers are eager to get their perspective across, the idea of hearing the consumer is often more foreign than it should be. Listening has always been considered part of effective communication. Now marketing is turning its listening ear to the consumers to make marketing an art of effective sales. Companies like Kodak and Dell are hiring ‘Chief Listening Officers’. These dedicated listeners keep a tap on their company’s products’ reviews, blogs, and consumer response to their competitors’ products. Consumer posts and videos are considered valuable data to shape their product’s image and bring business strategy in line with the market needs.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 7th, 2010 at 9:39 pm and is filed under Digital Marketing, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.