Marketing Advice: Cut Through The Clutter, Listen to Your Customer

 "Selling to people who actually want to hear from you is more effective than interrupting strangers who don't." -- Seth Godin

It's terribly frustrating to repeat mistakes, and I definitely agree with the old adage that a failure is a greater lesson learned than a success. One of the things we did really well at MOTM was we caught onto what our consumers wanted really early on. We were lucky in a sense in that the service we offered was adopted without any real push. It is fair to say that our interaction with our consumer was effective.

The experience developed in that start-up took quite some time to pay dues for Blank Label, my current venture. For the longest time we thought we had such a strong value proposition, and off a small sample space of research, we thought we understood what our customer wanted. How much of that was us initially listening to them? And, how much of them was us pushing onto them our opinion? I cannot honestly remember.

What I do know is that we were so caught up in what we thought the customers wanted, we neglected to spend time listening to them.

What happened?

We were providing college students and young professionals made-to-measure suits and shirts at the convenience of their college campus or workplace at a fraction of the price of other custom products in the market. We developed numerous campaigns on various campuses, but we were pushing a product that Godin would refer to as "strangers."

Most marketers are organized around more. More share. More customers.

And if you want to do that fast, it means marketing to strangers. Strangers that don't care about you, don't trust you and aren't listening to you.

The marketing just wasn't working. We were only adding to the monstrous amount of clutter in the advertising space. Even worse considering we were a bootstrapping start-up. This was partly due to the excitement we saw in the increasing amount of attention institutional investors were spending on our competitors. And naturally, we thought that it would be a great direction to move in. But, although we were following the money, we forgot about our customers.

Now, its the strangers, who initially ignored us, who are now going out of their way to listen to us. But, it required us to take the first step and listen to them.

College students do not feel pain for the inconvenience of driving into town to try on a suit. Sure it's nice to be on campus, but if it's not a suit, then it'll be some other reason they're going into town. And made-to-measure is great and definitely looks different, but it wasn't as strong as a connection we now develop with our customers. After some time, we started to notice that our customers weren't asking about our made-to-measure fit, they were desperate for advice on how to knot their tie, what color shirt to get for their interview, what type of suit they should get for their first (you never forget your first). As a generation of sweatpants wearers, millions of college students every year who enter the corporate workplace feel this terrible awkwardness or lack of confidence about making that adjustment.

Our interaction with our customer is strongest when the relationship is built on trust. They need to trust us that we provide a good product, are consistent and will provide an enjoyable time in the future. But, most importantly, they need trust us because we're helping them prepare for the next step in life. Whether it be giving Dress for Success talks, or the content we've developed for our website relaunch next month, we're looking to where we build our strongest connection with our customer. By listening to them, our mission has really morphed to empower students to develop confidence in taking that next life step. 

Guy Kawasaki puts it far more eloquently in The Art of the Start, and more recently at a UPenn Conference at which he spoke:

Innovations may attract unexpected and unintended customers. Think of Avon Products' Skin-so-Soft cream, which became popular as a mosquito repellent. Rule one, is take the money. Rule Two is learn who's buying your product, ask them why and give them more reasons. That's a lot easier than asking people who aren't interested 'why not' and trying to change their minds ... Listen to customers for ideas. That's difficult because an innovator or entrepreneur must often ignore the advice of naysayers and bozos who say it can't be done. Once it is done, and the product reaches the hands of customers, it's time to start listening to their feedback. One you ship, the you flip.

Solving a problem gives you more meaning, and your company a better connection with its community. But you first have to listen really carefully to what that problem really is.