Ever been with a company that thought they knew more than their customers? It’s a career-limiting experience. Why? Because, as we discussed last month, the reality is that customers know more than you do about their wants, needs, attitudes and perceptions. And their knowledge and perceptions can help them make a negative decision about your company as easily as a positive one.

For example, General Motors came up with a newly designed midsize automobile for 2005, targeted at the high-income, young, well-educated male market. GM designers poured meticulous detail into every area of the new car and their efforts created a fantastic, smart-looking, incredible performance machine. Test after test with the target market confirmed that GM had nailed the product, as ideal buyers rated the new car a perfect five out of a possible five points.

Only one problem.

The brand. Other members of the same target market, when told that the automobile was going to be a Pontiac, in test after test rated it only three points out of five.

What happened? Had the car’s sterling attributes fallen flat overnight? Nyet. The perception of this target market was that the designated car brand did not produce cars that were relevant to them, so, when faced with this conflict perception superceded reality.

Now GM will spend millions on a new positioning campaign called “The Road to Redemption” to try to shift that perception. They recognize that the best products are not generally the best selling products. The “best marketed” products are the best sellers. And that revolves around perceptions. But that’s where we started last month. Learning our market’s perceptions. We call it gaining current market intelligence.

Assuming you’ve employed some of the practical steps from last issue, let’s discuss how you use the priceless information you’ve gained to out-market your competition.

1. Keep coming back to what they want. What does that mean? That means, put your new market intelligence into a succinct written form. Then make it your mantra, your touchstone, something that everyone in your company sees visibly, so that everything you do is checked against it.

In other words:

Your mission statement must reflect an expressed customer “want.”

Think you have a good mission statement? Think again. How well does it reflect what your market has just told you it wants and needs?

Right. That’s what we thought. Change it. Sorry, but you’ll never be a customer-focused company if you have created your mission statement from what you want to do, instead of what your market wants.

Rewrite it. Make sure everyone gets a copy. AND CHECK EVERYTHING YOU DO AGAINST IT. We repeat: you will never be a customer-focused company if your mission statement is all about what you want to sell, instead of what your market wants to buy.

2. Give 'em what they want.

Watch out! This one will get a negative reaction from those people in your company tasked with new product development. But if you spend your time worrying about stepping on toes you won’t be concentrating on climbing over the competition.

The old saw of product development says that in five years at least 50% of your revenues will come from new products that have not yet been introduced. For many companies in today’s business environment the cycle has at least been cut in half. It’s now 30 months or less. Having an edge on your competition in market intelligence is only valuable if you translate that information into delivering what they want. So get moving before your competitors start munching on your lunch.

Product innovation doesn’t just include technical innovation, efficiency or new ways of doing old things. The best new products and services introduce "customer innovation." Customer innovation happens when market intelligence gets integrated into products and services that meet the wants, needs, attitudes and perceptions of the market.

Want to delight your market? Then get your "customer needs group" together with your product development team and kick around ideas based on what customers have told you. Make sure that everyone knows in advance that anyone who plays turf battles (“product development is OUR department”), or plays “bury the good idea” will not participate in future product planning sessions.

3. Let your customers launch your new products and services.

Ready to introduce a new product? Talk to your market, use their words, their issues, their solutions, their lingo. Talk to them as though you were one of them. In fact, even better, use the words you heard when you collected their impressions, to form the communication you send to them. Tell them in their lexicon how you’re solving the problem they identified. Use quotation marks and real quotes, even if you can’t attribute them to specific people.

Bottom line: they’ll relate. Everyone wants to know how someone just like them reacts to a new idea. Repeat: EVERYONE WANTS TO HEAR FROM ONE OF THEIR OWN WHAT THEY THINK ABOUT A NEW IDEA. So give them that information from their peers.

Fact: If you tell them about your new product or service with your language, and fail to directly address their issues, your launch will take you longer and cost you more.

Period.

4. Tune every marketing message to your market’s music.

In everything your market sees, use their language, their quotes, their issues and the way they describe them.

Making a flyer? Use their lingo.

Have an on-hold audio program on your phone system? Use your customer’s quotes, maybe even their recorded voices (with their permission, of course).

Creating ads? Ensure your credibility by letting your market talk for you. Remember that everything you say in an ad about what you do will be viewed with a jaundiced eye because you have an axe to grind. What your customers or market says about you or the problem you’re solving is golden. They’re more credible.

One of the powerful tools we’re using for MILA, a wholesale mortgage lender in the Seattle area, are double-page ads. But instead of the typical, “big bang” two-page spread, the MILA double-pages have a full-page ad on one side, and “editorial” on the other. The first month, we created an article, authored by an agency writer for the “advertorial.” (We have a slight advantage here, since we have actual working journalists – not just PR people - on our staff.) In the second month, we created a newsletter containing several articles about new MILA innovations. In both cases we used either direct quotes from the target market, or their language, to describe their issues and how MILA solved them. Incidentally, all MILA ads were created after many conversations with members of the company’s target market. In fact, MILA’s customers in effect helped design the ads.

5. Conform every brand opportunity to your market. Remember that your brand is defined by every place you touch your market. So how you touch your market should reflect what you know about them. Neglect the customer service and customer support aspect of your brand at your peril.

Here are a couple of examples:

We tried to call Fry’s, a large electronics retailer, to see if they stocked a battery for a laptop. The first call was routed to the correct department, someone answered, asked if we could wait a few minutes and then put the call on hold for 10 minutes after which it was disconnected. Not to be dissuaded, we called again and the call was again routed to the department, but never answered after 6 minutes – and then was disconnected. Being persistent, we called again and explained the circumstances of the two previous calls to the first person that answered. They asked us to give a name and phone number and promised that someone would call back. No one ever did. Finally, hours later we called and were miraculously connected to a salesperson in the right department only to be told that they didn’t stock the particular laptop battery. Whew! A round-trip of over 50 miles was averted, but only after four phone calls and such aggravation that the average shopper would have been tempted to never again shop at Fry’s.

Okay, even before we reference market intelligence, that’s just bad customer service. Now let’s factor in that the typical shopper at Fry’s is an electronics fanatic, read: engineering type. Notorious left-brainer, analytical type. This person likes information, data. Wouldn’t it stand to reason that you would make more information available to this market?

Now, contrast that with the discount airline jetBlue. We went on the jetBlue website and used their online contact form to send an e-mail asking if their aircraft had laptop power at each seat. WITHIN 16 MINUTES, ON A SUNDAY MORNING, we got an e-mail reply from a real person who explained nicely that the airline’s aircraft do not yet have seat power for laptops. Not the answer we wanted, but the e-mail was from someone who was knowledgeable, who spoke business lingo and in so doing, who also represented exceptional customer service. The impression they made was that they understood the typical businessperson that comprises their market. It’s no wonder that jetBlue is growing rapidly and is one of only two US airlines to be consistently profitable.

The contrast between these two companies is stark and represents the difference between being in touch with your customers and not. But let’s take it to the next step. How could both of these companies have used current market intelligence to be even better in customer service? Well, fundamentally, Fry’s is vulnerable to a competitor with good customer service so anything they do will be an improvement. But remember when we talked last month about taking every opportunity to talk to your customer? The jetBlue service person could have taken just a minute to ask how important laptop power is to me – maybe ask if it would be worth paying more or ask my opinion on what might be a good solution in the future? In other words, use the exchange with me to gather valuable data on an issue important to me.

6. One last point. Use your one mouth and two ears in proportion. And never forget the reason you were given them in that ratio. In other words, talk to your market often, but listen even more often. Remember that you cannot have as much credibility with your prospective customers as another customer does. That’s why customer reviews are a major part of Amazon’s marketing strategy. Create an ongoing customer information process. Have your PR firm, your ad agency, your direct marketing firm and any other outside branding or marketing communications firm you work with talk to your customers and prospects in the course of every major assignment or at least once a month. If they’re skilled at research, they can ask the right questions in the right way to get the answers you need. If they’re not skilled at this, you’ll get bad information and it will be up to you to get more accurate information. If you end up with the worst case scenario you can read books and articles on research methodologies to gain the tricks of the trade. Or call us.

Here’s to your marketing success.

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