Be Careful What You Ask For

Conventional marketing wisdom says "know thy customer."

True enough. Whether you're creating a new product or service, repositioning, or trying to improve your web page's search results, you need to know your customer (and for that matter, your prospects).

What's the best way to get to know them? Ask them, of course.

But be careful what you ask for.

The problem is, your customers and prospects don't always know the answer. When they don't, they have to figure one out.

Here's what can happen. Remember the "SpokesApple" campaign by the Applebee's restaurant chain? Yeah, didn't think so.

It's a safe bet Applebee's asked well-intentioned questions of well-intentioned customers about the spokesapple before its debut.

But here's what they overlooked: no matter how they phrased the question "will our new spokesapple make you want to eat our food," their customers didn't know the answer.

They might have thought it was funny, they might have thought it was cute, it might even have made them hungry.

But the road from those "favorable brand impressions" to having dinner at Applebee's is long, and the mental steps between the two is not as direct as it may appear. Base decisions about spending your limited resources on questions that deliver a more apparent payoff.

Ask yourself a couple of questions before you start:

• Will this question generate actionable information?
  
• Does this question ask my target about something they have direct knowledge of or experience with?
  

Examples

Don't ask "which charities should our company support?"
----->Ask "which charities do you support?"

Don't ask "will this advertising make you more likely to buy our product/service?"
----->Ask "tell me about the problem our product/service solves for you."

It's good to know your customers. It's good to ask them questions to learn more about them. But be careful what you ask for... or you could end up creating the next spokesapple.

And that's practical marketing.