Sherlock Holmes once pointed out that Dr. Watson saw things but did not observe them. He did not consciously note facts from the range of things his eyes passed over every day.
Marketers are guilty of this when they visit clients’ offices and see the clutter in their physical in-boxes and the hundreds of e-mails in their computer in-boxes, the sticky notes around their computer screens and the flashing lights on their desk phones. What should we observe and what should we do about our observations?
Our own work environments are cluttered with dozens of very important papers and files and messages. Our clients’ lives are the same or even worse. See if you don’t notice this when you visit their offices. Our immersion in the omnipresence and immediacy of these visual and auditory stimuli has dulled our perceptions to the point that we see but do not observe how overloaded our own and our clients’ surroundings are with appeals to notice this or that item, to do, to decide and to buy.
We assume that to drive sales marketers need their communications to break through the clutter, stand out and command a response. If you share this assumption you are likely to get impatient to find a solution. This impatience can lead to attempts to push the envelopes of taste and clarity and ignore your current marketing plans. The risks of such responses are that your prospects and customers will be put off by wild or inappropriate creative or overwhelmed by a jump in contact frequency. Give yourself time to think about what you have seen.
Try to convert what you see into an observation. The people who work in the midst of all the stimuli sort out what they need to do their jobs. You do that yourself everyday without noticing. Your customers will also filter out the noise when they get your electronic or physical mail, your social network update or your call.
When you visit your customers, ask them how they would find information, right then and there, on your category of products. The ones I have asked knew exactly where my last mailing was put or how to find the last e-mail by subject line. What I observed was that in doing this activity they relied upon those mailings and e-mails being in particular places. But if they got an oversized catalog or direct mail piece they would put it somewhere else because it wouldn’t fit their in-box or file.
Similarly, they would be likely to delete without reading an e-mail with a spam-like subject line or overly large attachment if their company’s e-mail server filters didn’t quarantine or delete it first. I suspect that by talking with your customers you would learn that the place they would turn to find your product information could be empty just because you tried too hard to get attention and action.
We don’t have to be detectives to see and observe. But we do have to focus on converting what we see to useful observations about our customers. Trying to break through the clutter that surrounds your customers because you didn’t think about what they actually do can be counterproductive. They are counting on you to be there for them, on the schedule of your contact frequency plan, in the way they are used to getting your information. Try to see what they see and you might find that as the economy picks up you will observe increased sales from the people you already address.
Bill Singleton ([email protected]) is a manager of analytic services at The Allant Group in Naperville, IL.
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