A piece of paper flew my desk today that happened to catch my eye. It was a write up for a client where the author had pulled a stat that he got from McKinsey that said that an estimated 80-85% of the whole economy are influenced by someone they know or trust telling them about a product or service. While between 5-7% of these same people say they are NOT influenced by the commercials they see on TV, the ads they hear on radio or the advertisements they read in the newspaper or magazines. McKinsey goes on to say that 80% of the people surveyed believes this sort of advertising to be dishonest and untrustworthy.Dishonest and untrustworthy!

What happened? When did we make the wrong turn in marketing that a majority of people out there believe we are out right liars and cannot be trusted? I know this is a huge question and can be answered in one or many different ways, but I am going to discuss one area, if you don’t mind.

I think things went a rye when we as marketers as well as companies who want to market their goods and services stopped listening to their audience, their customers, the consumers. Whether it was because we got too big, too slow or just too lazy, we stopped hearing what the consumer had to say. We assumed we knew what they were looking for and just made the decisions for them. Well now that technology has given even the lowliest of persons a voice and a soap box to stand on, it is time to start listening again.

Now the question is how do you go about listening? How do we find the right people, to ask the right questions, to get the answers we need? And even more important, how we interpret the data once we get it and how do we figure out what to do once we have all this great information?

Yikes, my head is spinning… These are all real interesting questions with a number of even more interesting answers. Over the next couple of weeks, this is going to be one of my focuses here. Discuss how to best listen to our clients/customers and what and how to do with that information. And also hopefully listening to you on your thoughts and feedback.