This is marketing trend #13 in a series of 14 marketing trends adapted from Seth Godin’s book Meatball Sundae. Previously in this series: Consumer to Consumers.

Complaints hidden – not any more!

In the Old Marketing, consumer complaints were easily hidden or ignored! After all, how much noise can one lone voice make? Even the plebian current affairs shows have narrow audiences.

In the New Marketing, consumer opinion has the tools to voice itself. Not only are consumers talking to producers and to other consumers, their collective voice is getting louder.

Digg.com is an online public opinion aggregator. It’s where millions of people vote each month on the top posts from across the whole world wide web. It tells you what is really hot. And, it’s not a made up list!

To be at the top of Digg’s list is worth about 20,000 new visitors to your page in a single day. They may not want to buy anything, they just check out what’s going on. If it’s a complaint they’re all looking at – beware.

Pay attention! Listen up! Your customer’s voice just got louder. Look after your customers or you’ll hear about it – and so will everyone else. Today, everyone’s a critic and has got a blog or a website to prove it.

[Tweet “Previously easy to ignore consumer complaints – now listen up! #marketingtrend”]

Source

This is from the Book Rapper issue Marketing How-Now that is derived from Seth Godin’s brilliant book Meatball Sundae.