How I Learned to Stop Selling and Start Listening: A Marketer’s Awakening
Stop focusing too much on numbers vs. people.
Note: The story below is not real and made up for illustration purposes. -Scott Agee.
I used to think marketing was about shouting louder than everyone else.
Fresh out of college, armed with a business degree and a PowerPoint deck of jargon, I believed success meant crafting the catchiest taglines, running the most ads, and “dominating the conversation.” Then, during my first job at a startup, I met Clara—a customer who changed everything.
Clara was a 62-year-old boutique owner who’d accidentally clicked on one of my Facebook ads for eco-friendly packaging. When I called her to “qualify the lead,” she didn’t care about our USP or conversion metrics. Instead, she vented: “I’ve spent 30 years building trust with my customers. Now, platforms like yours make me feel like I’m just…noise.”
That stung. Worse, she was right.
The Myth of Control
For months, I’d obsessively tracked KPIs, A/B tested headlines, and fine-tuned buyer personas. But Clara’s words forced me to confront an ugly truth: Modern marketing had turned me into a puppeteer, treating people as strings to pull, not humans to engage. I was so busy “optimizing” that I’d forgotten to ask: Why should anyone care?
So, I scrapped my playbook and tried something radical: I shut up and listened.
The Unsexy Power of Curiosity
I started spending hours in online forums, reading Reddit threads, and interviewing customers like Clara. Not to “extract insights,” but to understand their fears, quirks, and untold stories. I learned:
A baker buying our compostable boxes wasn’t just “eco-conscious”—she’d lost her father to pollution-related illness.
A coffee shop owner didn’t need “solutions”; he needed to feel less alone after his business nearly collapsed during the pandemic.
Suddenly, marketing stopped being about campaigns and started being about connection.
The Campaign That Flopped (and Why I’m Proud of It)
My team once spent weeks building a TikTok campaign around a trending dance. It bombed. But a last-minute post I wrote about “The 3am Anxieties of Small Business Owners” (inspired by Clara) went viral. No influencers. No budget. Just raw empathy.
The comments section exploded with stories like:
“Finally, someone gets it.”
“I thought I was the only one lying awake worrying about rent.”
We didn’t “drive engagement”—we earned it.
Marketing Isn’t About You. It’s About Them.
Here’s what I wish I’d known sooner:
Data tells you what, but humans tell you why. Analytics show clicks; tears, laughter, and rants reveal truth.
Vulnerability beats vanity. Perfection is forgettable. Acknowledge struggles, and customers will fight for you.
The best marketing feels accidental. People sniff out agendas. Serve, don’t sell.
The Paradox
Today, I still run ads and track ROI. But now, I see them as bridges, not bullhorns. The irony? When I stopped trying to “convert” strangers, our sales grew 140% in a year.
Clara? She’s now a loyal customer. Last week, she emailed me: “Your emails don’t feel like spam. They feel like letters from a friend.”
Turns out, marketing isn’t about being heard.
It’s about hearing.
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TL;DR for C-Suite Skeptics:
Want loyalty in a noisy world? Replace “audience targeting” with audience understanding. Profit follows.
Scott Agee is a marketing consultant. Contact Scott to chat about supercharging your marketing strategy today! He also contributes to AI Prognosticator on Substack.