Waiting For Your Cat To Bark?

One of the basics we talk about when marketing to women is that marketing (in the traditional sense) is just one step.  You can create a fantastic ad for a car, even incorporate compelling features based on women's feedback and input, but if the experience at the dealership is bad, you won't get the sale.  You can advertise a great financial planning product in all the top women's magazines but if when a woman calls the toll free number for a copy of the brochure the guy on the other end of the phone has no idea what she's talking about, you've not only wasted a bunch of money, you'll have to spend a lot more to persuade her to try you again.  In their new book, Waiting For Your Cat to Bark?, co-authors Brian & Jeffrey Eisenberg help marketers understand how to deal with the reality that the customer is in control.  According to the Eisenbergs, like cats, today's consumers are independent, unpredictable and finicky but many marketers are still approaching them as if, like Pavlov's dog, all they have to do is create a compelling message and it's bound to produce a predictable response. Companies that want to succeed must take every interaction into account and understand that for today's consumers (and we'd add, especially when it comes to women, who make 80% of the purchasing  decisions) it's action not words that motivate  "The experience has become the brand," say the authors, "it's about experience... theirs."  We couldn't agree more.