“Listen up everyone, we should be using Instagram for our lead generation programme, my 16-year-old son is always on Instagram and has thousands of followers”.
You know the feeling – where this combination of bias and seniority trumps any reasoning you may have. Reasoning such as the fact email marketing is still growing year on year and even today it averages a 38 times return on spend. Or the fact that although Instagram may well be the platform of choice for their beloved son, we know that our target audience spends far more time on Xing or LinkedIn when it comes to making business decisions. Sure, they may well use Instagram for fun and keeping up on with friends and family, but when did anyone want to hear from a B2B supplier at that point?
The lesson here is to be careful. I love the quote from a literacy hero of mine, Atticus Finch, the main protagonist in Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird: “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view… until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.”
So unless your (or your boss’) behaviour, use of technology etc. is entirely representative of your client base or target audience, then your opinion matters little. Instead, you must ensure you focus on understanding what they do/like/prefer and marry your marketing efforts to their persuasion, no one else’s.