Finding you customers beneath all that data

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Good morning, Marketer, may all your customers be loyal.

“You can never know your customer too well.” A key piece of advice I got from P&G’s legendary former CMO Jim Stengel. This was back in the day, when CRM solutions were the hot new thing. He dispatched anthropologists around the world to find out how people washed their clothes and hair and cleaned their homes. The cultural differences were fascinating even if you weren’t selling detergent. (Stengel said that in Japan people won’t buy large containers of Tide, even though it’s less expensive. Homes are smaller and storage space is at a premium.)

Stengel’s dictum may feel odd to marketers who have information coming at them out of a firehose. How do you figure out what data is important and what is not? Get to know your customer better. Understand what’s important to them and you’ll know which metrics matter. Which reminds me of what a garbage bag brand manager told me: “Don’t overthink it. It’s important to you, but it’s a two-second decision for them.”

Constantine von Hoffman,
Managing Editor

About The Author

Constantine von Hoffman is managing editor of MarTech. A veteran journalist, Con has covered business, finance, marketing and tech for CBSNews.com, Brandweek, CMO, and Inc. He has been city editor of the Boston Herald, news producer at NPR, and has written for Harvard Business Review, Boston Magazine, Sierra, and many other publications. He has also been a professional stand-up comedian, given talks at anime and gaming conventions on everything from My Neighbor Totoro to the history of dice and boardgames, and is author of the magical realist novel John Henry the Revelator. He lives in Boston with his wife, Jennifer, and either too many or too few dogs.