Marketing is about people, not your offering!

I know what you are thinking. You just want to promote your offering. But there is absolutely no way around this.

At this point your mind is telling you "What is this?". Naturally the mind wants to resist any new pattern of thinking. You still say "What new pattern?". Understandably, you have been completely devoted to building your creation, your offering to the world. But understand this, even Steve Jobs eventually realized the importance of marketing to set Apple apart from the rest of the tech world. But that is not even the important part. It is that he realized marketing could not be done product out. Listen in to the video below.

A New Pattern of Thinking

“Marketing is about understanding people.”

As simple as it sounds it takes a bit of time to get this. Marketing can only succeed what you have taken the pains to understand your audience intimately. Then when you tell them why is your offering so important to them and to their lives, it does not feel like you are shooting from the hip. And when your offering becomes a real experience is when true value creation happens. This eventually leads to trust when you deliver on the promises consistently. So therefore, marketing is not about your offering but about the people who will buy or invest in your offering.

The Gain Loss Perspective

“Your gain cannot precede the gain of your consumer”

Business is always about the gain loss analysis. All action and decisions are always relative to this. But understand this, if your gain precedes the gain of your consumer you may win the short term race but you will not be able to create a business. And when I say business I mean creating a venture that is capable of making real profits, consistently. In my books it is not a business any other way. No GMVs or repeat customer ratios for me. This way of thinking is also just another rendition of the same marketing mindset that we are discussing. Being able to create that focus on the consumer consistently when you are building products or business will not only make you more amiable to listening to your customer but also create value that will sustain your business and make it successful. Only when you have this mindset will you be able to think of marketing as well in the right way.

It Just is Better Business Sense

There are significant advantages to being people centric rather than offering centric.

1. If you already know which set or subset are keen on your offering then you can really sharply focus your marketing investments.

2. If they are keen on a certain type of offering then the entire energies and investment can be focused towards that. Consumers can always grow to like what other things you have to offer when you provide them what they really need, want or aspire for.

3. Gaining deep access to your preferred set of audience will really help in establishing an emotional hook with them to appeal to their good senses. An emotional hook creates a far better resonance in the prospects mind for a far longer time than a comparative feature driven high decibel promotion.

4. Once trust is established through delivery of promises, it will help create a bridge through which delivery of varied offering can be created.

5. Through emotional trigger driven marketing a premium margin spectrum can be created that the consumer are quite willing to pay as long as it is in their aspiration or inspiration zone.

A relationship based on trust has a far better chance of survival even with mistakes being made during that time period. People are far more forgiving of things that touch their heart.

I guess the question that has popped up in your head now is “What is this emotional vs feature driven marketing”. That will take another blog of course to discuss. But I guess you have a basic understanding of what marketing really entails. I am sure you have a lot more questions. But that is way better than asking the wrong questions or no questions at all.

We are always there to assist you with all your queries. And don’t worry if you feel they are too basic. Why do you think we are here? Just give us a holler. Go to Services section of the Home page for more details.