Who Influences Your Marketing?

[Anonymous]

Here's the latest in our discussion series based on the "Engage to Win" workbook . This week's topic is: There’s no amount of money that would enable a company to outspend its customers’ voice. Who and what sources do you listen to in order to inform your marketing and engagement -- customers or others?

You can take a look at Steve's recent blog for additional background.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

[Grace_Brebner3]

Such a good point to discuss.

I've always been a fan of surveying customers, but it's so important to have a very clear objective for each survey, then very carefully word and thoroughly test them. Surveys always need to be taken with a grain of salt; they're part of the journey to the answer, but not the answer in itself. Surveys are always going to be prone to responder bias, which may be exacerbated by your audience selections. Combine their results with effective data science and UX testing - listen to what your customers say they think, how they say they feel, what they say they do, and then map that against what they actually do, and what the data says.

It's basically just a little science experiment. Start with a hypothesis, and then test it. And don't forget about acceptable p values!

[Darrell_Alfons2]

Yup good points.

My thoughts on sources that inform marketing:

• Customers - to hear pain-points, address challenges, pique interest, and overall help them win with our offerings
• Product team - to understand and communicate the purpose behind the features and the long term goals envisioned
• Sales - to receive field intelligence as to what is driving wins and losses
• Competitive landscape - to ensure our firm is playing both offense and defense when it comes to winning and retaining customers
• Industry trends - to plan ahead and pivot if needed to best serve the customer in the years to come

[Amanda_Thomas6]

All of the above! ^