Everyone is writing and designing for authenticity and transparency. And they should be. These are the primary reasons our customers are engaged. Customers expect to have opportunity through blogs and customer service portals to tell manufacturers and merchants what they think of the products and services purchased.

The days of just pushing a message out based on what we think our customers will like is so dead. It must always be about pull now.

Listen first to create the right digital marketing pull campaign

Creating a pull campaign requires listening first. In 2008 in the midst of the worst of the recession, Harley Davidson conducted a survey of their riders and created a new campaign based on survey findings. Ad Age posted a story about the crowd-sourced ads and the resulting campaign’s positioning. Springing from this was the Harley campaign, We don’t do fear–Screw it, let’s ride. Three things about the campaign created a strong impression with me:  First it is bold and in sync with the projected personality of Harley owners; the other is that Harley got out to “interacting with customers at rallies, races and rides” and they listened.

Listening is the hardest discipline in business. It’s so easy to tell our customers what they should think, it’s harder to listen to their honest thoughts and have the courage to shape our company and our products in response to our users.

Businesses that continue to succeed are the ones who listen, shape, listen some more and continue to evolve based on what the customer tells them.