customer language
Our predictions for 2009
We’ve been walking our talk recently and checking in with our customers to be sure we understand what is of real value to them. It has been quite illuminating and very, very useful. It is helping us shape our business direction, our marketing and sales activity and the way in which we communicate. It has helped us define the language of our customers and enabled us to speak it more fluently.
And this is what we have given our customers that is so valuable to them:
A much deeper understanding of what is really important to their customers (what really makes them buy that brand) - creating a brand personality that they struggle to develop in any other way
A lexicon of their customers’ language which they can apply across all media (from TV ads to pack design and merchandising to shop layouts) and from which they can write much better creative briefs
The training to make sure they can speak their bespoke customers’ language fluently and that there is common understanding within the whole team
Additional rich, new and illuminating insights that are both strategic and action oriented
Customer-driven business knowledge that can be executed immediately
Presentations/debriefs/workshops they actually enjoy and stay awake throughout
For a long time we have been banging this drum that the key to successful sales and marketing is speaking the customers’ language and developing dialogue with customers in their language not yours. The companies that do that have seen phenomenal results - e.g 155% sales uplift from one TV ad, a store refurbishment that cost one tenth of the usual spend, a way above target increase in transaction value, redirection of a training budget giving a significantly better ROI, a product saved from bombing by a subtle shift in pack ingredients.
So our prediction for 2009 is this. Those companies that actively seek to learn and fluently speak their customers’ language and to understand their unique brand personality, will thrive and flourish even in this gloomy economic climate. Those companies that insist on shouting louder and more slowly at their customers in the company’s language will at best survive and at worst go down the pan.
Every business regardless of size lives or dies on cashflow. The key to good cashflow is customers putting their hands in their pockets. They are much more willing to do that for brands that they value and that speak their language.
Here’s to a very prosperous 2009.