👉 Today’s topic: Always start with the ‘WHO’.
Subtopic: Understand your customer deeply.
(All posts under this series can be found here: https://harish.blog/topics/mmm/)
💡 Any marketing plan / strategy / thinking STARTS with the customer. You need to really understand his / her, and get deep into his / her mindset and thinking. Understand the said AND the unsaid; go meet her, talk to her, observe her day, put yourself in her shoes and empathise (in full). Do this regularly (once a quarter at the least).
1. Go many layers deep: The best marketing work of my life came from deeply understanding not just her behaviour but the deeply-held beliefs behind the behaviour. Follow the ‘5 whys’ technique. When you talk to her, ask ‘why’ 5 times on a single important behaviour or statement, and then you will be able to peel the layers of the onion and get to the essence.
2. Listen to the unsaid: Observe how she interacts with your brand, and what problem you are solving for her. Go beyond what she is telling you. See what she is doing; read between the lines and connect the dots.
3. Experience her life: In categories / products where possible, try to go through the experience from her POV. If you market diapers to new moms, try waking up 3 times in a night; if you market a razor, use it on your skin the same way your customer would.
4. Solve her life problems: What does she want in her life? What drives her? How is your category making a difference in her life? How is your brand / product making a difference in her life? What is the ‘job to be done’ by your brand, what problem can you solve for her? _(More on these topics later in this series)_
5. Leverage data to look at behaviour, not just claim data: Your surveys and quant research might say one thing about the ‘voice of the customer’, but her actual behaviour on your platform or app might show something else. Behaviour always trumps claim data, so if you have the luxury of having real behavioural data, deep dive into that. Use that as the base and layer the research on top of that.
💡 The team that knows their customer the best will win every marketing game vs any competition.