When Listening Is Leverage
2025 is coming to a close and during this time of year, we reflect on what we’ve accomplished (or not) and use this intelligence to formulate our plan for the year to come. In this case, 2025 has been an interesting one from a technology advancement and economical perspective no doubt. As we look at the coming year and know that marketing budgets will tighten while expectations continue to rise, I believe our ability to listen – really and truly listen – to our audiences becomes our strategic weapon.
I’ll explain.
Modern marketing systems produce oceans of data, but I ask you today, does all of it matter? And which data matters most? We see best in class brands winning when they are focused on translating what they hear and see into learning and learning into action.
Sometimes when speaking to a fresh produce company, I’ll get asked the question, “Do people even care about websites or social media pages anymore?” After finding my breath, I say calmly, “Without a doubt.” I go on to explain how our “digital footprint” is the key to being known today. If we’re waiting for people to find us amongst the vast sea of businesses and options they have out there, what will elevate our brand specifically?
Social signals, community insights, and real-time analytics reveal what audiences value, where they struggle, and what earns their loyalty. Getting to the root of your brand and your product’s sentiment online should elevate insights that are critical to long term success. Now with AI information and support at our fingertips, we have the opportunity to collect data and even analyze it with the click of a button. The real tricky part is having the dedication and discernment to make sense of the data to really “hear” what audiences are telling us with their sentiment, buying habits and general trends.
Everything is moving at rapid speed these days and we all know it. Sometimes it feels like we’re sitting back and watching as the world moves forward from a marketing perspective. So as we close 2025, I challenge you, reading this humble blog post, to consider the following:
- Should we poll our top 10 customers and openly discuss what we can do better with the data that we have?
- How about our employees? What have we been hearing and seeing that needs to be addressed before we turn the corner into 2026?
- How are we perceived online? Have we seen engagement growth over the last 10 to 11 months or are we stagnant or, even worse, on the decline?
Listening – really listening – to these inputs will not only help you plan for 2026, but it could be the kick in the pants your business needs right now.
