Brand Roots: Know Your Customers

A living and growing brand needs continual nourishment in the form of information about customer needs, wants, preferences and values. Markets change and marketers need to adapt. Your brand needs to be as intimately involved with and connected to your customers as a tree's roots are involved with and connected to the soil that surrounds them.

There are many ways to keep this connection vital and dynamic. Traditional market research tools like polling, surveys and focus groups are still useful. Social media and networks are providing new ways for customers to take an active role in communicating their expectations and desires regarding your brand. Blogging and Twittering are two-way communication channels that, if used correctly, can make customers part of your enterprise.

In fact, customers always have been and always be an essential part of every enterprise. But managers have developed a habit of thinking of them like herd animals or prey instead of partners. Aggressive salespeople are taught to "eat what you kill." Kinder, gentler companies view the sales process as one of managing relationships. But few are willing to take on the customer as an active partner in the business.

This new relationship is facilitated by the Internet, but the exchange of information that it involves is predicated on a new way of understanding the roles of provider/producer and consumer.