Jacques Warren: Freedom Fighters

Guest Blogger: Jacques Warren, Bell Business Solutions

At the risk of being cynical, I would say that marketing is the art and science of influencing someone into doing something in one’s favor. Marketers try a lot of things to get customers to respond (i.e. act) in an expected way, which is ultimately getting them to spend their money. A lot of analytical efforts go towards understanding exactly what people do, and how to influence consumers in this specific way.

I would suggest that behavioral analysis pretty much belongs to the above category. By observing what visitors do on websites, we try to re-organize content so that we will get more of our desired actions. We call this “increasing conversion” in interactive marketing language. Change, watch react, change again, watch new reaction. Don’t get me wrong; this is great and fascinating stuff. Not to mention the extra money it can generate!

But we must be careful. Too much of that could make us believe that, after all, customers will react the right way providing we find the right stimuli. If we could just find the right tone of the bell, they would… well you understand. In their latest book, Waiting for Your Cat to Bark?, the Eisenberg brothers warn us about ending up seeing customers as canines with budgets. Through the brilliant use of personas, they introduce some psychological factors that determine how visitors will respond to content. Unlike Canine’s, humans are often complex when it comes to their research and buying decision patterns. However, the Eisenberg’s will forgive me; we are still here in a world of expected reactions to carefully planned stimuli.

Listening to the Voice of the Customer re-introduces free will into the marketing equation. We must leave our cynicism at the door and relearn that people, real ones, still have some freedom of choice in this consumerist world. True, a lot of effort and intelligence are spent at even influencing that, but we would make a grave mistake as marketers in believing we can do without it, and that it is irrelevant. If customers, people, can choose (and they can) we’d better listen to what they have to say about how we do things.

Adding attitudinal analysis to your current behavioral metrics will allow you to connect with that freedom, to respect it, and above all to learn from it. Yes, at the end, more people will act the way you want, which is a good thing. But you will remember it is because they chose to…