26% of Marketers Care About Understanding Consumers

Get ready – this is going to blow your mind.  I ran across a blog entry by Ted Mininni on MarketingProfs this morning that references a recent survey of senior Marketing execs and it had some stunning findings.  Seriously, I can’t believe what I read.  Here are the 3 most shocking statistics from the article:

1. 6% of respondents felt that their “go to market” capabilities were “very good.”
2. Only 26% reported making inroads in better understanding their consumer targets was a priority.
3. Only 14% cited retail and service execution was a priority.

Ummm, are you serious???  6% are confident in their go-to-market capabilities, while only a fourth of the respondents want to understand their customers better?  Really?  What year is this?  No wonder we still see companies blowing money on traditional advertising and marketing while retreating in fear when emerging media is discussed.  One thing’s for sure – if you don’t want to understand your customers, then you DEFINITELY don’t want to engage in Social Media!  How in the world can this NOT be a TOP priority?  I’m struggling with this one.

Equally as disturbing is the incredibly low 14% who said that retail and service execution was a priority.  What are these people smoking?  Hopefully it’s one of those things where ‘somebody else is worrying about that’ and these critical factors are not truly being ignored.  Either way, for marketers to thumb their noses at the customers and customer experience is nothing short of shocking!

This reeks of old school mentality where companies would put out a product or service and expect people to flock to it because they said so in their advertising.  Well, guess what?  That doesn’t fly anymore!  Smart marketers know this and take the time to understand their marketplace before throwing something out there that might not make sense.  Companies would be wise to invest some of their budgets in getting to know the consumer market and developing a solid strategy before going to market with a product or service.  But, isn’t this Marketing 101?  Maybe these execs need to audit that course every once in a while.