It’s About Conversation, Not Marketing


After reading The problem with ‘conversational marketing’ I was inspired to express my views on the importance of conversation and the evolution of marketing.

Let’s be clear, the real problem with conversational marketing (other than the God awful term itself) is the ‘marketing’, not the conversation. The human problem with many traditional marketing practices is that they are exploitative in nature, selling/hyping goods and services in the market that are of dubious value, and only benefit those doing the selling. Of course this is not the case with the majority of marketing or marketers, but the extent to which a few bad intentioned actors can create a stereotype that is harmful to an entire group of people is quite stunning.

The gist of the article is correct that product and experience are the most important aspects of the business by providing goods and services to the market that create profits and satisfaction. I wrote about this after our awesome SxSW panel earlier this year in a post called The Golden Rules of Marketing. If you are more interested in the importance of great products as the first step to great marketing, listen to the podcast of the Self Replicating Awesomness session.

My problem is with the article’s dismissal of the importance of conversation over messaging to create understanding. It demonstrates how badly a few buzzword spewing charlatans can hurt the efforts towards transformation across an industry (communications in this case).

As I have demonstrated in unplanned exchanges in numerous workshops I have facilitated over the past year, it is very easy for people to mean the same thing, use different words to describe it and have an argument resulting from their different viewpoints. Conversation in this case, creates understanding, bridging cultures and differences in the use of language – something that a simple published statement or headline (aka message) can not do if no one is able to be engaged, listening and responding.

When those of us who understand what is happening say the words ‘listen and respond’, we are not limiting ourselves to the words we say back to someone after listening. We are talking about what we DO as a result of HEARING them as well as what we say. By listening, and truly hearing what is said, we are also showing that we are paying attention – it speaks volumes about the true intentions of our actions in the market place.

The post’s author sees the biggest proof of the failure of conversational marketing in a 2007 study from 9 months prior to their post:

According to the University of Michigan’s American Customer Satisfaction Index, Dell was at the bottom of the pack in 2007 and actually lost 5 percentage points from the previous year

The author is correct in noting that it is much more difficult to provide a product that meets the market’s needs/expectations then it is to talk with them. Duh! The point isn’t so much that they are talking together, but what they do as a result. To expect conversations between representatives of a company and the market to turn around the culture and operational systems of that company within a matter of hours or days is of course impractical. These things take time. We are all human, people misunderstand, and of course, people make new mistakes which need to be understood and corrected all the time.

The article goes on to further state:

As such, companies should invest first and foremost in making sure that they do a good job of providing consumers with the products and services they want and need.

But of course, in order to understand what products they want, the companies need to listen to them FIRST, deliver the goods, listen to them again, change, deliver the goods again with improvements and so on. This quote shows how backwards the thinking is – companies need to do more up front to understand the needs of the market (traditionally thought of as research, which is of course a form of a conversation) before they invest in producing the goods.

The post goes on to say:

I would also point out what may seem counterintuitive to conversationalists – the fact that sometimes silence is the best indicator of consumer satisfaction.

Apparently, the author – Drama 2.0 – hasn’t read one of Kathy Sierra’s best blog posts called Be Brave or Go Home, which explains why customer silence is not golden if your company lives in the zone of mediocrity. Nor have they read Ken Blanchards book called Raving Fans, nor do they understand the importance and impact of Word of Mouth.

The thing is, that if I buy a computer from Dell (and I am a Mac guy, so the chances are slim), I hope I don’t have to talk to Richard Binhammer about a problem, but he hopes I talk to him about how much I love it. Either way, because I know that they are listening, as humans do to one another, I know that he will help to fix any problems. I know that their intentions are to serve us with better products and that sometimes shit happens. If the intention is made clear that they are not a faceless corporation here to take my money and harm me by selling me bad products/services, I would rather buy from them then anyone else.

This is our philosophy at The Conversation Group, and the main purpose we came together as an agency – to help more companies embrace the spirit of conversation with markets and to move beyond marketing by discovering, engaging and serving their markets in a more respectful and effective way.

Thanks to Rebecca Caroe from Creative Agency Secrets who pointed out this article called The problem with ‘conversational marketing’. (disclosure: two of the subjects of that post, Richard Binhammer and Shel Israel are friends) This is something I was writing about last summer in the post entitled, Stop the Insanity, Don’t Call it Conversational Marketing, and more recently in response to a Doc Searls post (keep getting better Doc, we’re with you) called Clues vs. Trains.

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  1. #1 by jzb - June 28th, 2008 at 12:52

    Enjoyed your commentary. Words do matter. Marketing truly has become a term which carries mostly negative connotations… and yet, if done well (or even at all) it is the way in which we present our best ideas, our most useful selves and our work. Thanks to the folks in the sub prime mortgage market and those operating in other overtly annoying sales practices for grossly muddying the waters. It’s an opaque world out there, right now.

  2. #2 by Kevin Grossman - June 28th, 2008 at 13:09

    Great post, Chris. The power of conversational marketing is, well, quite powerful – both in B2C and B2B. We also tell our clients (and practice ourselves) that you need to provide your clients with content, content, content – blogs, podcasts, white papers, etc. – value-based information they can consume easily, digest and then apply to their organizations today, whether they ever buy from them or not. Be part of their conversation and needs and kill the crap jargon and sales schtick.

  3. #3 by Tim (@Twalk) Walker - June 28th, 2008 at 13:10

    I like what you say here, Chris, in no small part because I believe that “paying attention” has ALWAYS been the hallmark of the good merchant.

    Of course a merchant is in business to make money — that’s the point of being a merchant. But the good ones have always done it by paying attention to their customers’ needs. Doesn’t matter if you’re a fancy restaurateur, a social-media consultant, or a fruit vendor in a souk — the basic principles still apply, because the SAME basic activity is going one: a merchant trying to make a living by meeting the needs of a base of customers.

    I intentionally use the word “merchant” in place of “marketer” because I think that, all too often, we come to focus on the codified rules of the discipline of marketing (some of which are good, some of which are bad), instead of the enduring aspect of what good marketing does — i.e. good marketing carries out the timeless intentions of the good merchant.

  4. #4 by Dale Larson - June 28th, 2008 at 14:56

    I agree with Chris that the “marketing” part of conversation marketing is a problem.

    I also agree with the E-Consultantcy suggestion that conversation must be backed up by action.

    Chris concludes that he want “to help more companies embrace the spirit of conversation with markets and to move beyond marketing”

    Moving beyond marketing means having conversation and action that work together. Lip service agreeing to customer-orientation won’t cut it.

    To succeed, you must cut across the organization both broad and deep.

    Organizational structures with separate silos for product development, sales, support and marketing are one of the impediments to the adoption of such “conversational marketing.” How do you make all these groups part of the conversations with customers and motivate their actions toward them?

    What might an ideal organizational structure (and the internal conversations and actions) look like where this kind of marketing focus takes place not in a marketing department but is the top priority across every function?

    Breaking down silos is a well-discussed but persistent problem. Same for customer-orientation. Could “conversational marketing” bring something new to our understanding of these problems?

    I think Chris is right that “marketing” is the problem, but in a bigger sense than he meant. We don’t want to solve a marketing problem. We want to solve business and organization problems. We’ll have to become something more than marketing consultants to do it.

  5. #5 by Brian Carter - June 29th, 2008 at 19:44

    For some reason this makes me think of the “push me pull you”, an animal that went opposite directions of itself- conversation is a collaborative push and pull- marketing that pushes without looking at what’s being pulled is the ridiculous animal I just mentioned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Dolittle#Pushmi-pullyu

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