The Importance of Communicating on your Customers Terms
While the hardware has changed, many of the underlying technologies we use to communicate with our customers is still in use 15 years later. Here's why it's important to understand your customers preferences.
Does anyone else remember Windows Phone? Well, 15 years ago, it was an important enough medium for consuming content that Facebook developed an app for it. And its an example of how marketers adapt to their buyers changing media habits.
How you sell your product or service is one of the fundamental areas that we consider when we start a Marketing Tech Health Check. Because the technology you use should be driven by the business case of meeting your buyers at the point where they're paying attention.
In my case, I was a Marketing Manager for a firm that trained people on Microsoft Outlook. Like many other technophiles - my main way of consuming content was through a Axiom PDA (ahem, Personal Digital Assistant) from Dell Computers.
Before you laugh off the operating system, consider that a lot of those communications channels are still widely used today... Indeed some are even seeing a resurgence as they're passing through the different phases of the Gartner Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies. Consider where podcasting was 15 years ago versus today.
So if you wanted me to buy something from you, then you really needed to have
- A responsive website that I could browse on the go
- Emails that formatted properly while traveling
- Knowledgeable content that allowed me to learn about the benefits of your product
As Marketers, the important point here is that customers are still widely using these channels. My preferences are different than other people. If you want their business, then your marketing needs to understand these preferences and make use of them.
Ethnographic Research for Digital Marketers
Market Researchers use a technique called ethnography to help understand how buyers relate to each other with their behavior. It centers on observation of buyers and their reactions to different stimuli. You might use HotJar to track how users are interacting with your landing pages from a qualitative perspective. Then switch over to Google Analytics, Facebook Ads Manager, or an ActiveCampaign Custom Report to track patterns with broader groups of visitors.
Consider my experience as a mobile buyer. My PDA was terrific! It had Internet Explorer, Outlook Mobile, an Media Player Mobile, and an RSS Reader... It was the perfect companion for a long bus and Skytrain commute when I lived in Vancouver!
However, from a marketers perspective, consider how I was using this:
- Responding to Email: I read and replied to work and personal emails
- Calendar Management: I managed my daily calendar on Outlook Mobile
- Podcasting: I listened to podcasts using Media Player Mobile
- News: I read all the news with the RSS Reader
- Entertainment:
I watched an occasional video on my way to work
Today, I use a Moto G Stylus from Motorola Solutions with Android as my operating system. Other than the camera and the smaller battery, the form factor is not much different than my old PDA. That means that a lot of the fundamental psychology in marketing is still relevant - and even more important today - because it drives the purchase behavior.
So get to know your customers and figure out how they prefer to buy. Then do everything you can to be in those spaces in a genuine, collaborative, constructive way.
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