The Election and Black Friday – More in common than you think!
Without discussing politics, we all agree that the pundits got it all wrong. Ask yourself this – are you sure you are engaging and connecting with your target audience? The reason why POLITICIANS and BRANDS aren’t connecting with their audience is because they think they’re listening to their consumers, but they’re not!
“I’m giving consumers better quality, value and performance, but they’re not buying my product, or even taking a moment to listen to what I’m telling them?” If you’re a marketer and this sounds familiar, ask yourself this – Are you looking at the product and advertising through your consumers’ eyes, as opposed to your own? Are you telling them what you think they want to hear, but not what they are really looking for?
It’s fair to say that marketers know their product inside and out. They are intimately aware of the unique advantages of their offering as well as its competitive differentiators. Product marketers are the first to read the fine print of their carefully crafted ad, watch their TV demo, click on their banner ad, view their pre-roll to completion, recall their refreshed logo, and note their endcap message. Moreover, in a supermarket, marketers will go out of their way to find their product on-shelf among their competition and bend down to purchase the item. Can the same be said about their desired consumers?
Not even close.
Realistically speaking, 60% of shoppers won’t bend down to seek and/or buy a product, 92% will pass on viewing a pre-roll ad, and 55% will ignore an endcap display. What’s more, consumer research programs that administer surveys and/or evaluate forced exposure to ads and packaging won’t help because they don’t reveal the truth about what’s working versus not working. In order to truly connect a product to its target, marketers need to watch TV, surf the Internet, read, and shop through the eyes of their consumer since it’s their experience that matters most. Consumers are the ones who are making the decisions and, as difficult as it may be, marketers need to take themselves out of the equation.
At PTG, we see what you don’t! We have the research technology and proprietary approaches that offer a “real world” one–way mirror that captures the all-important human element as consumers experience your brand.
To learn more about how our real-world research methodologies are benefiting today’s biggest brands, please reach me at dan.morris@pretesting.com.
Best wishes to you and yours for a Happy Thanksgiving!