As a marketer, often the best thing you can do to improve your work is talk to customers.
Too often marketers climb up into their Ivory Tower and guess at what prospects are most concerned about. They make up messaging. They forget that they’re not the target audience.
You can survive on a diet of second-hand reports from the sales team, of listening in to a few sales calls, of case studies from successful customers, of analyst research on what the market wants. But there’s no substitute sometimes for standing in a trade show booth, at a larger industry event, talking to every one who comes by to find out what makes them tick, why they’re skeptical about your pitch, and why they won’t buy your stuff.
There’s a certain joy in it, too, because you know you’re getting valuable results from the time you put in — time that many other marketers won’t. Common sense, not commonly practiced.
