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Listening to the Marketplace

Reed Luengen
12/10/2015

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Marketing and selling today have a key rule of thumb when meeting
with clients, potential customers, or conducting any marketing research. Talk
one-third of the time and listen two-thirds of the time. Listening in business
is such a key element and without it you cannot be successful. You have to
know what your target audience wants and needs. A lot of challenges can go
into listening to your target audience, especially with modern technology
today. There is a wide variety of means that both the marketers and the
customers can reach out to one another, and utilizing those means in an
efficient matter can lead to great success. This requires you to be an
effective active listener and an effective social listener. Due to the explosion
of social media outlets, anyone can now be a writer and a critic. It is
important for marketers to know how to properly analyze and interpret such
messages, as many are as informal as can be. This helps build good
customer relationships, vital to successful business.
To fully understand how marketing relates to listening and how it has
changed, there are concepts that are used, and still used today but altered to
the ever so changing environment. When attempting to sell, market, or build
an advertisement, listening is far more important than just asking. You can
ask all the right questions but if you are not listening to the answers, you are
not going to be able to utilize any of the information. Even if the questions
are rather basic or the answers are obvious, effective listening will help you
can then probe your client or customer so you can get deeper answers out of
them (Langmaid, 2010).

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There are many common elements between listening to a client or

customer and listening to someone whom you have a close relationship with.
The motivations and goals may be different but the tools are the same. In
one article, "Mastering the Lost Art of Listening", the author goes into detail
when talking to a client describing various levels. It is not the well-known
Hurier model but points them in the same direction. The research has a
common theme of displaying empathy, and in the first level, they ask you to
mimic the content. Repeating the content is the easiest way to show that you
have heard them, however it does not establish much of a connection with
your client, it can even come off as rude or condescending if you are not
aware of your own tone of voice or any nonverbals. Level 2 is a little more
complex as it asks to rephrase what the client has said. This calls for you to
listen more intensely and be able to properly interpret what your client has
said. Then you have to be able to form what they have said into the same
message that is reworded and that they can interpret properly. Level three
has you relay the feelings, thoughts, and ideas that you think the client may
be having. This shows a great understanding, or misunderstanding, of the
message. Now you are truly emphasizing with your client and that will help
build a good personal connection. Level four then combines levels two and
three together (Finley, 2015). This is a great process, but with great
advancements in technology, it is far easier to market through the different
medias that have resulted due to these advancements in technology. To do
this you have to have an understanding of Social Listening.

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Social listening is often viewed as just being aware of your company's

image or reputation. However, it is much more than that. Social listening is
being aware of what individuals are saying and having the ability to have an
efficient and effective response. Essentially, it is half awareness and half
response. The response does carry a little more weight than the awareness,
because a poor response can make the situation far worse than it already is
(Patel, 2015). Social listening has become a necessity for marketers today,
especially with the take-over by social media, something that has just begun
in the past few years.
Before we dive into why social listening is so important and what good
social listening is, we need to understand what bad marketing and
advertising consists of. One reason marketing campaigns fail is because the
company does not have something in the campaign or messages that allows
the consumer can make a connection. This can often make the ad or
message feel phony or meaningless and possible make the customer
confused. Because the message never engages the customer effectively, it
then gets lost with the thousands we see every day (Gianfagna, 2013).
Although these issues are well known and companies go at great lengths to
try and avoid them, it is much easier said than done.
In an article published in Forbes, the author described a big challenge
for marketers these days, and it is that the field keeps changing. The article
goes on to mention that old marketing techniques are no longer useful. As

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the people, trends and technology change, so do the marketing techniques.

The author dubbed this concept, real-time marketing. To be able to
accomplish real-time marketing you have to know how to real-time listen
(another name for social listening). Being a competent real-time listener
means the company is able to see what the consumer are saying on social
media, being able to effectively engage with those customers, and then
being able to have a real-time response to their statements. Today
customers want a seamless experience, and when a hiccup arises that
involves your company, it is crucial that you have a timely and meaningful
response that will not make an already negative situation worse. The author
at the end (Foley, 2014) sums up the article. Real-time listening sets the
expectation that you can be there for your customers when any issues are
brought forward, because whether you are ready or not, someone at anytime
can make a complaint on just about any platform.
The Forbes article is sums up social listening, it is being a good
communicator (Foley, 2014) The article written by Paul Edwards and
published in the International Journal of Market Research, it looks at benefits
of being a good social listener and how your communication can be boosted,
but with the new surge in technology, there are issues. The first issue, and
one of the most important issues, is establishing a form of trust. In old school
selling and marketing, it was all about whom you knew and your relationship
with them. Today, there is a far less emphasis on establishing relationships
with clients and customers. One of the many reasons is because of the

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replacement of the real-life human that sold you the product or you talked to
in person about whatever stage of business you were currently positioned in.
Now, if you are going to be conducting business, there is a good chance you
never talk to someone in person, you may never even hear his or her voice.
This makes it harder to have trust, as anyone can be anyone on the internet
and these various social media sites. To establish this trust, marketers have
to show that they are aware of the customers and care. It is hard to portray
this via the internet but when you are capable of being a good social listener
and can respond in an effective manner on these social media portals, it will
keep the customer coming back (Edwards, 2010).
This concept of lack of trust is reinforced in Stephen D. Rappaport's
secondary research on advertising research. In this article, he takes a
collection of primary research that deal with listening and advertising and
marketing and builds conclusions with a collection of data. One conclusion
directly conferred on the idea of emotional engagement that goes on when
selling, marketing, and advertising. When they looked various super bowl
commercials (all from the same year, even though a year was not specified
in the article) they looked at how many times the commercials were
downloaded and shared via the internet and then how those companies' buzz
increased or decreased. It was obvious that the more the commercial was
viewed and enjoyed by the viewer, the higher the activity level of the
companies' internet presence (Rappaport, 2010). As mentioned before, it is
not easy to establish trust on the internet or the social media sites. However,

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because the marketers and advertisers were able to draw some form of
emotion out of the viewer, they felt closer or more comfortable with the
company. This started a relationship or built from the one that may have
already been established with the viewer. The marketers were able to do all
this without even saying a word in person. Rappaport concluded that not
only does this take a strong awareness of social listening but knowing your
target audience and having strong emotional intelligence.
When establishing an online presence or a new marketing presence in
general, you need to set up objectives, specifically listening objectives. You
are not going to be able to do everything through these new marketing
portals like you could if it was in a personal conversation, but you still need
to be able to set the tone as if you could. But, knowing the problems you
want to be able to solve or the messages you want to get across to the
consumers will allow you to set an appropriate presence and make it easier
on the consumer so they know what to expect. This will help build on the
trust and the relationship with your customers. To help set your listening
objectives, you need to know the trends of the target audience, you need to
know the need that is looking to be fulfilled, and many other common
business concepts (360i.com, 2011).
When you have established good social listening, you will be able to
learn a lot about your company. You will be able to have greater brand
awareness. Companies that have good social listening know what people are

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saying about their brand and their feelings toward the brand. They will also
know more about your consumers and their culture. You will have a greater
understanding of you your main consumers are and how they connect with
each other. You will then have a better insight that will allow you see their
needs and goals that they have and that your company can possibly fulfill.
Knowing your consumer and their niche culture will help you see what is
trending right now. You will also be able to keep up with the lingo of your
primary consumers. Something that is very important when communicating.
This will help make your company "stay in the conversation" and not just the
awkward kid sitting just outside the friend circle. Social listening also will
help know more about the competitors. You will be able to see what others
are saying about your competitors and what your competitors are saying
about your company. Why are some consumers choosing that brand over this
brand (360i.com, 2011). Social listening is not just for a company to reach
out and help the consumers; it will also help them enhance their business.
Like any common social media user, every business looking to engage
in social media needs to be aware of what they put out on to the internet.
There have been some absolute blunders posted on the web by companies
that could have tarnished their reputation. Just before Thanksgiving of 2013,
K-mart announced that they were going to be open on Black Friday and all
day during Thanksgiving. Many consumers saw this as an extremely
unethical decision as they were taking away from their employees' family
time and holidays. Of course, this was taken to social media, more

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specifically Twitter, and K-mart chose to respond to a few of these posts. But,
where Kmart really messed up was how they responded. They chose to
respond with the same statement to several of these posts that were
"attacking" them. For this instance, Kmart sent out responses to the tweets
that were calling them out for this decision. "Kmart is staffing w/ teams &
seasonal associates when possible, giving them opportunity to make extra
money during the holiday." Yes, this does state why they chose to be open
but it could not seem anymore impersonal and robotic-like. This definitely
does not show that Kmart cares and does not help build a positive
relationship with these consumers (Feloni, 2013).
Another occurrence involved London Luton Airport. In March the
London Luton Airport posted on FaceBook a picture of a plane that had slid
off the runway and captioned it "Because we are such a sweet airport this
is what we prevent you from when it snows". Of course they intended to
make their viewers laugh, always a positive when you can do that. However,
the picture they posted was of an occurrence that resulted in a six-year old
child dying. This came back to bite them. Another occurrence that happened
on Twitter had to deal with the cooking site Epicurious. Shortly after the
Boston Marathon Bombings, they decided to tweet "Boston, our hearts are
with you. Here's a bowl of breakfast energy we could all use to start today."
and then proceeded to post a link to a recipe. It got worse from there. They
then tweeted, a half-hour later, "In honor of Boston and New England, may
we suggest: whole-grain cranberry scones" and again a link to a recipe. They

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chose to use the tragic events in Boston as a chance to promote their

recipes. This came off as extremely insensitive to the public, no surprise, and
damaged the image of Epicurious, which will be hard to recover from (Feloni,
2013). Those are just some examples of companies poorly trying to establish
a connection with consumers, this is why social listening is important, had
these companies been more aware of the situation, their own brand
awareness, and the culture of their consumers, they may have not chosen to
make such terrible posts.
Social listening has become a huge part of marketing in all forms of
business. With the explosion of the internet, more importantly social media,
companies can now reach out to their consumers in such an easier fashion
that it is essential that they take full advantage. There are limitations to
social listening as you are not doing as much face-to-face business because
having a stronger online presence is far cheaper. This can make it difficult to
establish trust with clients and consumers and make it difficult to establish
any form of relationship. When listening you need to be aware of your
audience's needs and then respond in a manner that shows empathy and
that wants the consumer to come back. Being effective in social listening will
give you many advantages, too. You will have a stronger grasp on which your
primary consumers are, what they are interested in, and what needs they
have. You will also have a good eye on your competitors. You can see what
draws others to them and the where they stand in the eyes of society. But
most importantly, it will increase your brand awareness. You will know what

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people are saying about your brand and what they like and do not like about
it. It is important that companies have good social listening so they can
utilize advantages that these new marketing tactics offer.

References
Edwards, P. (2010). Will Listening Make Us Better Communicators?
International Journal of Market Research. Retrieved from
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.wlc.ezproxy.switchinc.org/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfvie
wer?sid
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Feloni, R. (2013). Ten Biggest Social Media Marketing Fails of 2013. Business
Insider. Retrieved
from http://www.businessinsider.com/10-worst-socialmedia-marketing-fails-of-20132013-11?op=1
Finley, D. C. (2015). Mastering the Lost Art of Listening. Journal of Financial
Planning. Retrieved
from
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.wlc.ezproxy.switchinc.org/ehost/detail/detail?
vid=8&sid=7
c97f126-8aa1-48e8-826bb4d9f44fa380%40sessionmgr111&hid=125&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl
2ZQ%3d%3d#db=buh&AN=110709836
Foley, J. (2014). How Social Listening Enables Real-Time Marketing. Forbes.
Retrieved from
http://www.forbes.com/sites/oracle/2014/05/16/how-sociallistening-enables-real- time-marketing/
Gianfagna, J. (2013). Why Listening is the Most Powerful Skill in Marketing.
Smart Marketing Strategy. Retrieved from
http://www.gianfagnamarketing.com/blog/2013/01/21/why- listening-is-themost-powerful-skill-in-marketing/
Langmaid, R. (2010). Co-Creating the Future. International Journal of Market
Research. Retrieved from
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.wlc.ezproxy.switchinc.org/ehost/detail/detail?
vid=11&sid=
7c97f126-8aa1-48e8-826b-

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b4d9f44fa380%40sessionmgr111&hid=125&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl
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No Author. (2011). The New Era of Online Listening. 360i.com. Retrieved from
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Patel, N. (2015). How Social Listening Can Improve Your Marketing.
SocialMediaExaminer.com.
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Prideaux, J. (2014). Social Listening Tools to Strengthen Your Content

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Rappaport, S. D. (2010). Cutting Edges: Listening-led Marketing Science,

Media Strategies, and Organizations. Journal of Advertising Research.
Retrieved from
http://web.b.ebscohost.com.wlc.ezproxy.switchinc.org/ehost/detail/detail?
vid=6&sid=7
c97f126-8aa1-48e8-826bb4d9f44fa380%40sessionmgr111&hid=125&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl
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Rappaport, S. D. (2010). Listening Solutions: A Marketer's Guide to Software
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