Five: Marketers out of Control
Old-school marketers, who feel themselves to be firmly in control of their brand, are horrified at the present reality. A list of facts is presented, all of which are already true in the present day - and some of which have been true all along.
- Customers know more about your products than you do, and get new information faster
- Customers decide the price they pay and where they will buy your product
- Customers sell your product to others or persuade them to buy something else
- Customers can find out your business secrets and know a great deal about your cost, profits, manufacturing methods, and corporate finance
- Customers know who works for you, including their personal beliefs and quirks
- Customers determine the reputation of your brand, and work actively to increase or diminish your esteem - even a few cranky customers can damage your brand, and the words of one customer can get more attention than a television advertising campaign
- Customers regular conspire with your employees, your competitors, your suppliers, and your retailers
- When customers speak about your brand, they are more credible than you are
The Internet and social media has given the customer a great deal of power to access information that once required considerable effort to obtain, to share it with many other people quickly, and to connect with others and organize their efforts very easily. All of this was possible before the Internet, but it required more effort and took more time.
This is a serious problem for marketers who assume that they control customer behavior, and the value they provide to their employers is in making people buy products. In the pre-internet era of mass media, there was some valid claim that they controlled the majority of the information that customers received, through paid advertising and media relations. But now, customers are clearly off of the leash.
The authors present some outdated statistics from 2004 - and even then 46% of all shoppers indicated that they started their shopping process through a search engine. (EN: A more recent study by Kesley Group in 2011 indicated 97% of shoppers go online to research products, that they consult an average of 7.9 different sources before making a decision and seeking a retailer)
Word-of-Mouth Trumps All
Word of mouth, once limited to verbal comments in social settings where few people were in attendance, has long been the most trusted source of information - and with the explosion of consumer-generated content online, it has exploded. A person no longer needs to ask about the experiences of friends and neighbors - there are millions of people talking all the time, with a searchable archive of what's been said.
And while the traditional media clamor about the unreliability of online sources, users are becoming adept at sorting out the quacks from those whose opinions are valid, and particularly since social media ties online commentary to a single identity, users are able to consider the reputation of their sources (and there are even methods by which sites enable people to rate others who comment).
As such, everyday people have the ability to share their opinions with one another, and to be recognized as informal authorities in certain subjects - and having done so, to be more credible than advertisers or the media.
The Nature of Your Prospects
Not only do businesses want regular customers, but customers want regular suppliers - experimenting with different brands or buying from different retailers is an effort they wish to avoid, and their willingness to tolerate imperfect products from inconvenient sources has too long been mistaken for loyalty.
The Internet and social media provide listening tools for businesses to learn from customers who are attempting to communicate to them - if business is willing to listen. The traditional response has been to ignore and dismiss them as critics or complainers and refuse to even consider accommodating them.
To buy a product from a firm once is a proactive choice made by a customer, but it is based on certain expectations that must be met. A mildly disappointed customer will give a firm a chance to make amends when they are not. A customer whose overtures are ignored will find another supplier - and given competition in the present day, the barrier of inconvenience is significantly lowered. And once you have lost a customer, they will not soon come back.