A post Seth Godin made has been percolating around in my brain for the last three months.
“I can’t imagine eating durian ice cream,” is not the same as “no one likes durian ice cream.”
We fail as marketers, editors and project managers when we can’t find the empathy to bridge the gap. It’s a lovely shortcut to make things for yourself, to imagine that you are the client, the reader or the customer. But most of the time, you’re not.
This dovetails closely with what Ruth Hartt has been saying about asking customers what they value or seek most from their interactions with your organization and then creating marketing messaging that aligns with their goals and interest.
Instead of guessing what customers need, active personalization involves them directly:
Ask them.
Help them clarify what they’re trying to accomplish.
Then use what they willingly share to make their journey more useful.
[…]
This is remarkably similar to what the New Bedford Symphony Orchestra found in their need-based segmentation pilot:
In their 16-week controlled pilot, patrons who received messaging based on self-declared needs converted at 2.9x the rate of those receiving the NBSO’s standard messaging.
Obviously Hartt’s approach requires less empathy than Godin’s. You don’t need to employ much empathy if you are asking people what they value. Though you do need to understand what sort of language and framing will resonate best with people who have certain goals for their experience.
What both don’t directly mention is that the product or experience you are working to provide needs to be informed by an understanding or empathy about what sort of programming will help people achieve their goals. Programming decisions are an exercise in marketing.
Just as being repulsed by the idea of eating durian ice cream doesn’t preclude others from enjoying the food, programming decisions can’t be made based on personal preference. I have had plenty of financial and participatory success programming events whose appeal I just don’t understand.
But it is enough for me to know that there are people with a serious interest in that experience to make a decision to offer it.
