Marketing isn’t a conversation

There is a growing orthodoxy that today, business (and particularly marketing) is all about conversations. We’re not selling to people, we’re engaging with them. We’re not creating and fulfilling needs, we’re supporting customers’ aims. And we’re not, repeat not, trying to change people’s behaviour.

Sorry, but that’s crap.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the whole social networking thing. It offers interesting and potentially valuable new ways to get my clients’ stories out. And, personally, I’m pretty heavily engaged in it. But for the majority of marketers (and the vast majority of B2B marketers) social media will account for a tiny percentage of any new sales.

Think of any significant purchase you have made in the last year or so. Look at the key brands you gravitate towards. Do you really, honestly want a conversation with any of them? Well, you might if something goes wrong with something you’ve bought but that’s simply about customer service or support. Otherwise, you’re probably quite happy continuing to have conversations with friends and colleagues about everyday stuff. Why will this be any different for your customers?

It’s a tragic fact (if you’re in marketing anyway) that customers for the most part do not care about or even think about your products on a daily basis. They have other stuff on their minds like work and family and a hundred-and-one other things. If we believe it is any other way, we’re simply deluding ourselves.

Quite simply it is marketing’s job to get people to care at the point at which they begin a purchase decision. Better still is to create the need for that purchase in the first place. And we can and should change buyers’ behaviours. Anything less is a straightforward abdication of our responsibilities.

If having a conversation fulfils these objectives, let’s go for it. Likewise if social media offers a more effective way of persuading people to buy our products, bring it on. And sure, by all means let's try to engage customers if it will deliver tangible results. But if not, let’s not kid ourselves that we’ve found a marketing utopia when we haven’t.