Is the marketing you’re doing actually what you would want as a consumer? Surprisingly, for many Fortune 1000 marketers, the answer is “no.” A live survey conducted with over 1,200 marketers from companies like IBM, Verizon, JPMorgan, Intel, and MasterCard at the ThinkContent Summit earlier this month found that there is a major disconnect between the marketer and consumer mindset.

How Marketers-As-Consumers Make Purchasing Decisions

While 17% of marketers say they visit a brand’s website before making a purchasing decision, the majority (64%) researches for non-branded content and information, such as user review websites, more than any other sources like social media or media publications.

When it comes to making a big purchase, a whopping 97% of marketers say they spend more than an hour on research. More than half of all marketers (68%) will spend between two to seven hours researching before making their purchasing decisions, with 29% spending eight or more hours on research.

When asked what types of content marketers find most valuable as consumers to inform their purchasing decisions, the majority (70%) finds user reviews as most helpful, followed by product demos (13%), user review websites (7%), and how-to informative content (4%), with case studies, blogs and news content coming in last at 2%.

How Marketers Actually Market To Consumers

While marketers find that email marketing (54%), search engine marketing (21%), and content marketing (14%) have the highest ROI for their marketing investment and that traditional advertising delivers the lowest ROI (5%), close to half of all marketers still put most of their eggs in the traditional advertising basket – even though it’s a channel that marketers themselves, as consumers, do not turn to when making a purchase decision.

Despite their own consumer preferences and behaviors, only 27% of marketers dedicate most of their budget to content marketing. And while marketers allocate the majority of their marketing dollars to traditional advertising, they actually spend most of their time and resources creating blog content. That doesn’t make any sense, does it?

It’s Time For Marketers To Think More Like A Consumer

Marketers are constantly looking for more effective tactics to reach their customers, not knowing that the best marketing strategy is right in front of them already!

The people marketers are trying to reach, at the end of the day, are just like themselves. If marketers like you, as consumers, are spending hours researching for informative, valuable, and relevant content to help inform your purchasing decisions, you can bet that your prospects and customers are the same way. So rather than throwing sales pitches and ads at them, why not actually give them what they need? As a consumer, wouldn’t you want that?

What will ultimately help your brand stand out from the crowd to connect, engage and convert today’s consumers is by thinking more like a customer and matching your marketing efforts to what they actually want and need – informative and actionable insights that will help them make a better, more informed purchasing decision. So, are you ready to put on your customer’s hat?

If your brand has already adopted a more consumer-centric approach to your marketing strategy, what tips and best practices do you have for marketers who are just getting started? Please share your ideas!