In the first part of this series of posts I tried to show – from 30,000 feet – why interruption is no longer a valid form of marketing for most companies. I ended by suggesting that before joining an on-line conversation, it was important to listen. I also promised to tell you how but that’s for the next part. For now, here’s a story about ‘why’.

The unwanted restaurant
John is the landlord of a busy pub. It heaves with customers at lunchtimes and evenings. The bar gets crowded and he’s had to add tables outside for warm days and even set up a covered area out back to convert into a beer garden. One thing John has never done is sell food beyond the usual nuts, crisps, and that staple of high pub cuisine – the bags of pork scratchings. He’s lost count of the times he’s been asked if there is a bar menu. Takings over the last few years have been good and John had the cash flow to covert a large room upstairs into a rather fancy restaurant – even if he did say so himself. He brought in a chef, who designed a tasty menu, using high-class produce. The dishes weren’t cheap but, then again, it was high quality food.

In the weeks leading up to the launch of the restaurant, John posted notices around the wall of the bar and left leaflets on the table. As soon as the menus were printed, he left copies in the bar, too. For opening night, John offered a free bottle of wine with every two main courses bought. Standard stuff.

Opening night came. John hoped – and, to be honest, expected – for a hectic night. In the end, the restaurant was never more than half full. The bar downstairs was as busy as ever. Perhaps it would take a bit longer, he thought, to develop the same buzz. He knew that the quality of food was good enough to generate some positive word of mouth.

Over the next few weeks, bookings for the restaurant continued to fall rather than rise. By the end of the second month, only a booking for a wedding party that had lost their original venue to flooding allowed John to pay the restaurant staff.

From behind the bar, John could see drinkers on any given night pick up the menus and look at the leaflets, talk with their companions and….. stay where they were. Occasionally, he’d even asked a punter whether they were going to eat. The replies tended to be uninformative and non-committal.

Poor market research
Of course, what happened was that John took a perceived market for pub food and remade it in his own image. He wanted fancy food and a fancy restaurant. His customers wanted pub food in a pub they obviously enjoyed. They certainly didn’t want to leave the atmosphere of the pub they had come to and go upstairs to a restaurant atmosphere. If they wanted a fancy restaurant, they could take their pick of a large number in the area.

John could have saved himself a lot of expense and worry – and embarrassment – by listening. His clientele were asking for food and were talking to each other about food. Each table in John’s bar was a forum where he could have gathered first-hand knowledge of the sort of food and restaurant that was wanted. Luckily, John saw the light and did just that.

Pub grub
Now the upstairs is as busy as the rest of the pub. The fancy decor is gone along with the fancy food and fancy prices. When people ask for food, the bar menu is exactly what they’re looking for. They even have to grab their own cutlery from a tray at the end of the bar. People love it.

A lot of small companies do a John, if you’ll pardon the expression. They hear a message from their customers or prospects and force it into something it’s not. Something that fits what they want or plan to do. They they’re surprised by failure. Unlike in a pub, of course, it’s hard to wander round and ask all your customers what they really want. There are no groups sitting around tables in front of your company HQ.

However, the internet lets you visit all those tables or forums – a bit like speed dating. (I’m using my imagination here: my one experience of ‘speed’ dating came when I was in my late teens and was set up to go on a blind date. I turned up, she turned away. The gap between expectation and reality was just too great for her. She wanted fancy food and got pub grub, perhaps. Anyway, end of date.) The trick is to find the forums and listen in and then join in.

This is obviously not a task for your busy CEO. So, who listens? And how? Next time.