I think brand marketers are starting to lose touch with how consumers feel. Most data we have available today through dashboards, engagement, and brand tracking tells us about behavior. A consumer can keep buying your brand while hating the price they pay. They can interact with your ads to speak negatively about your brand. They can stay loyal because it’s easier than finding a new brand. Consumers are talking about prices increasing, shrinkflation, lower-quality products and poor service/value all over the internet.
I think many marketers fail to understand how consumers feel about their brand. They have just learned to measure better. Walk into any large marketing department and you will hear terms like impressions, engagement, reach, brand lift, conversions, attribution, ROAS, share of voice. Everyone has dashboards to show off their metrics. Their agency showed them their campaigns were over goal. Millions of people viewed their social posts.
Ask consumers what they are saying. Prices are higher. They are paying more for smaller portions of their favorite products. They are angry about subscription services that are hard to leave. Loyalty cards aren’t as beneficial as they once were. Customer service has decreased in quality. Products are lower quality. All these things while brands talk about purpose, community and innovation.
Maybe that’s where the problem lies.
Marketers understand consumers through measurement. Not by experiencing them as consumers.
As marketers, we understand consumers at a data level. We know that person clicked on our ad. We know they came to our site 3 times. We know what sku they bought and what coupon they used. Did they open our follow up email. But we don’t know if they liked our brand.
They may have bought your product because they didn’t like your prices. They may have stayed in your loyalty card program because it’s easier to stay. They may have clicked your ad because they wanted to see how much your product went up. They may have engaged with your social post because they hated it. And they will keep buying your product until the day they don’t.
This is important because marketers sometimes assume that if someone is buying your product they love your brand. They may not.
Consumers are experiencing financial stress and noticing all of these things.
Consumers are becoming experts at spotting price increases. Portions are getting smaller. People are taking note of this. If something was 16 oz, they now know it’s 14. They are sharing screenshots of how much certain items cost and how much they went up. Many even know how much an item cost a few years ago.
It’s called shrinkflation. As marketers, we may not even realize the portion size has decreased. It’s a line on a spreadsheet. But to the consumer, it’s another reason why your company is trying to cheat them. No amount of advertising can help if the consumer doesn’t feel your company is being honest.
Social media is the world’s largest focus group. Too many marketers only see it as another medium.
Brands spend tons of money researching what their consumers think. But they overlook what consumers tell them every day.
Reddit. Tiktok. Youtube. Facebook. Reviews. Amazon Reviews. Instagram. All these platforms have consumers telling your company what they think about your brand.
Companies need to be consuming this information more. Instead of thinking of social as another medium to distribute content.
Post more. Measure more. Create more.
Social should be about listening more.
When you conduct research, you are asking consumers what YOU want to know. When you are monitoring what they are talking about, you get what THEY want to share.
There is a big difference between the two.
If there are hundreds of people complaining about your new packaging, pricing, or product quality, that should be shared with your CMO.
Maybe even your CEO.
Your dashboards may be misleading you.
Technology has made marketing more accountable for what it does. But measuring everything has a downside. If you can’t measure it, you may not be giving it enough weight.
We know how many people clicked. We may not know how they felt about your brand. We know how many people converted. But do they trust your brand?
We know our ROAS, but do consumers feel our products are getting more expensive?
We have become so good at measuring our marketing we may be measuring all the wrong things.
You could be running a highly successful campaign that everyone loves. While your consumers think your product is too expensive.
Your marketing can be successful, but your brand is failing.
That’s what we need to measure.
Agencies play into this as well.
Others measure marketing too. Agencies measure the work they create. Marketing measures the work they create. Media companies measure if their media was successful.
It’s hard to get outside the bubble of those that measure marketing.
Someone needs to be asking what consumers are saying about us.
Not what our research says. Not what our agency says. But what are consumers saying about us?
That could be very enlightening.
We could use AI to our advantage or against consumers.
AI can help us understand what millions of people are saying about our brands. There are so many reviews, comments, discussions and articles that can be used to find patterns we would never find as humans.
But we can also use AI to send consumers more marketing.
More emails. More ads. More social posts. More promotions.
More of everything.
We have a chance to use AI to understand consumers better or we can continue to market more to them.
I don’t think they want 10x more marketing from us. I think they want us to listen 10x more.
Maybe we just need to look at the data we already have.
We as marketers have tons of data on our consumers. We just need to combine it all.
Research. Social listening. Search. Reviews. Complaints. Pricing. Etc…
We have so much data on our consumers. We just need to understand what is decreasing.
We always try to find what is increasing. Maybe we need to ask ourselves what is decreasing.
Read some one-star reviews of your product.
Go to Reddit and spend some time reading what people are saying about your category.
Listen to some customer service calls. Read some of the comments under your brands ads.
Google your product and type words such as expensive. Quality. Problems. Cancel. Is it worth it.
Do this for your competitors as well.
This may not give you a pretty PowerPoint, but it will give you some discomfort.
That’s how you know you’re on the right track.
Great marketing starts with understanding what our consumers are telling us. Not what we want to tell them.
They may be telling us something right now.
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