Maureen, I love the topic and your premise here. There is a lot to dig into.
Now, if I can be a jerk (or preview what real jerks may say) for a moment, to illustrate how I think we’ve landed in this mess: This is exactly what “know your customer” means!
Of course, those jerks would be right, but they are missing your point: despite all of the activity, many marketers still don’t really know their customer.
The real issue I see underlying this in marketing today is two-fold:
- We are just checking off the customer insight box. 3 personas? Done!
- We are lazy and don’t even bother to use the limited info we have to create something relevant, because we would rather talk about ourselves. This ensures that, even if we do kinda know our customer, they will never feel like we do.
This is why we are seeing buyer journeys, conversation maps, buyer dynamics, etc tacked on. When we just checked the box, we didn’t really know our customer, so we kept adding more boxes to check off in an attempt to fill the gaps in our knowledge.
So yes, I agree, this is a missing skill. Sadly, it defies the check-by-box mentality that pervades marketing today and that is going to make it a difficult skill for many marketers to learn, and even more importantly, a difficult discipline for marketers to establish in their organization.
Great perspective, I look forward to hearing more about it!
