Are You Speaking Your Customers Language?

Knowing the "voice of the customer" is marketing speak for

a) understanding who buys your products
b) gathering, interpreting and using customer intelligence
c) talking benefits rather than features
d) all of the above

Unsurprisingly, the answer is d) all of the above, but the ad below shows that you could of course, just take the term literally.

Who cares?

A survey by MarketingProfs found that just over half (56%) of the companies who took part, thought they had a clear understanding of their customers tastes and needs, which means that almost the same number do not. It's this vague understanding of who to market to, that results in all those wasted marketing budgets.

One mouth and two ears

Despite the logic that we should be listening twice as much as we speak, hearing what customers have to say is often way down on the priority list, unless you're a completely customer centric organisation like Zappos.

The majority of companies ask their audiences for feedback via focus groups, surveys etc. Some are even clever enough to add customer service (a.k.a. complaints) to the mix, and while this is listening, it tends to be a rather misleading snapshot in time.

Make it social

Social media now gives everyone a constant, two way chance to speak, (or at least type) and be heard.  No matter what size your business is, it's easier than every before to know what your customer thinks, feels and cares about.

My favourite and free tools for this job are

• SocialMention - monitoring over a hundred social media sites, Social Mention interprets how the world is feeling about a particular word, phrase, industry etc. in terms of strength, sentiment, passion and reach of those currently contributing. 
• Twazzup - one for Twitter lovers, this little tool is a mine of information, including top influencers, retweets, link sharing and best associated keywords for your search. 
• Addictomatic - similar to Twazzup but with a longer reach, since this monitors across platforms such as YouTube, Flickr and Delicious.
• IceRocket - pulls in FaceBook, Twitter and blog coverage and has the nifty advantage of scanning across languages, so international rantings won't be missed.
• Google Search By Image - image based, you can now start your search for what customers might associate with a particular photograph to help you rethink keywords, web links and overall communications.

You might not always like what you hear, but knowing what's being said, at least lets you join the conversation.  Today, there are no excuses for being a wallflower.