I like what I sell and love what it does for my customers. I’m now in the process of digging a little deeper to map out my customer’s psychographics:
⁃ What are their values?
⁃ What are their spending attitudes?
⁃ What makes them excited and what makes them tick?
#ThrowbackThursday
There are certain things that are commonplace in every industry:
1) You rely on customers and clients for your success, and
2) You will have competitors.
Creating perceived value is subjective and depends on individual perceptions. Even if a product or service offers great features or benefits, its value is only meaningful if it is perceived as valuable by the target audience.
I think that understanding consumer psychology and using data to uncover insights about preferences and motivations will help businesses create perceived value in the minds of their customers. Effective marketing, branding, and communication strategies can influence perception and enhance the perceived value of your product or service. Contact me via e-mail for a confidential meeting about your organisations value proposition.
““The essence of power is the ability to define someone else’s reality and make them live according to that definition as though it were a definition of their own choosing.””
Henry Ford was the founder of the Ford Motor Company and he famously implemented the concept of the assembly line to increase production efficiency and reduce costs, which ultimately led to lower car prices and increased sales. Ford recognised the importance of leisure and its connection to his strategy for selling cars by making cars affordable and accessible to the average person it would enable them to have more leisure time and enjoy activities outside of work. I think Ford was brilliant and at the same time pathetic, he was both a genius and a fool, you can watch a wonderful documentary here and make up your own mind.
““Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.” ”
This idea aligns with the principles of marketing, which focus on understanding consumer needs, wants, and desires, and then tailoring offerings to meet those expectations. Marketing plays a crucial role in bridging the gap between what is produced and what is desired by consumers. By identifying consumer preferences, conducting market research, and utilising various marketing techniques, organisations can effectively communicate the value of their products or services to potential customers. This process involves crafting messages, creating branding strategies, and utilising persuasive techniques to influence consumer perceptions and ultimately drive demand.
c/o The New York Times
I think many economic problems are marketing problems in disguise as the root of these problems lies not in the logical aspects of economics, but rather in the psychological realm of human perception and desire. This perspective emphasises the importance of understanding and influencing consumer behaviour and preferences in order to create value and solve economic challenges effectively. One key aspect of this argument is the idea that value is subjective and exists primarily in the minds of individuals. While there may be inherent qualities and functions in a product or service, their value is ultimately determined by how they are perceived by consumers. And this is why many of the problems we try to solve logically would be easier to solve psychologically.
A digital marketing campaign is much more dynamic and sustainable than a general marketing campaign. What most entrepreneurs actually want but have lost sight of in the online universe is the science of these four timeless inputs that truly reflect what they desire:
• The person - Understanding and connecting with the target audience on an individual level.
• The problem - Identifying and addressing a painful, complex, and urgent issue.
• The solution - Offering a course, coaching, product, or service that effectively resolves the identified problem.
•. Creating value - Determining how the provided solution generates value for the individual, whether through its unique features, benefits, or price point.
I think by re-establishing focus on these inputs, entrepreneurs can navigate the online landscape more effectively and achieve their desired outcomes.
Influencers play a significant role in the fashion industry by promoting and endorsing brands and products to their large and engaged social media followers. I think real influencers move the needle, unfortunately there are far too many people who are being paid as an influencer and do not influence consumer behaviour and purchasing decisions. Kayne “Ye” West is an influencer, and his Yeezy collaboration with Adidas was terminated due to his alleged inappropriate behaviour. Adidas have admitted that they are experiencing a serious economic downturn. Read more here
As humans we don’t perceive or value things objectively, as the context of something determines our reaction to it. Therefore, if you want to make something more valuable you can either change the thing itself or you can change the content. I think that there are only two ways to produce a valuable product innovation and marketing.
1. Find out what people really want and then work out a clever way to make it.
2. Find out something you can make and find out a way to make people want it.
The iPhone is a hero product
An ancillary product refers to an additional product that is obtained as a free or supplementary purchase while buying another product. These types of products are usually offered as an incentive to customers, rather than reducing prices or offering discounts, to encourage them to purchase the primary product. The main product of a brand is typically considered as their flagship (or “hero”) product, which embodies their values and is prominently displayed in presentations and displays. It is the product that people recommend to others and urge them to try. Regardless of how many products a brand offers, the flagship product is the one that best represents the brand. I think we tend to be willing to pay for the flagship product as we believe it provides good value for money, unlike ancillary products.
I think that one of the most wonderful things about marketing is that you can create huge amounts of delight, memorability, and distraction with relatively small levels of expenditure. Organisations, businesses, and governments often seek grandiose solutions, overlooking the fact that small things can also have a profound impact human behaviour. Encouraging people to make better choices has a greater influence than using punishment as a deterrent. Most human actions deviate from physical laws, and are often disproportionate in nature, unlike the predictability of physics. The correlation between ‘Input A’ and ‘Output B’ is usually insignificant in human behaviour and can even be contradictory.
Via KEA Startup Hub, Copenhagen
Start-ups, by definition have no momentum, and in business, before you gain momentum, you have to create the perception of momentum. This is why start-ups need marketing from the beginning of their journey, and this should not be - fake it, until you make it - either. Many people confuse marketing with telling lies or overt hyperbole (over exaggeration). It's about building excitement, curiosity, and interest about what you're doing. I have a proven track record of exceeding results in highly demanding environments from start-ups to corporates. Are you thinking about springing out as an entrepreneur? Contact me via e-mail for a 1:1 discovery meeting.
c/o Harvard Business Review
What kind of stories should we be telling to help people rekindle hope as we come out of the war in Ukraine, and is connectedness the route to achieve this?
All marketers tell stories and as individuals we tell ourselves stories as this is what guides our behaviours, decisions, and choices. So many of the big stories people believe in have crumbled away, stories of progress that tomorrow will be better than yesterday. We have lost so much that we don’t have the stories that provide the scaffolding we can use to climb out of all our difficulties. We must decide personally and as a community about where we are going as we are looking at a world that is making new rules, new connections and new decisions. Change is happening and as marketers this is what we do - We make change!
Here’s a framework for creating marketing value for your organisation (V.A.L.U.E)
- Understand how VALUE is created within your organisation and how it is created for customers.
- Be ACCOUNTABLE to your organisations value creation metrics.
- Use the LANGUAGE of value creation.
- Scale the UNDERSTANDING of value creation across your organisation.
- Have an EVIDENCE based mindset and report regularly using the agreed value-based metrics.
Creativity is critical not only to brand building, but also to value creation as a whole.
a) Do you understand where your brand value is created?
b) Do you understand how your customers perceive and receive value?
c) Do you understand the value your brand delivers both short and long term?
Contact me via e-mail for a meeting on why you should use business language and not marketing jargon deeper when speaking about your organisations brand value.
How do you tell the right story to the right people?
The best way to learn marketing is to do marketing, and you can do marketing in lots and lots of different ways. This is because you don’t need a budget anymore as marketing is not advertising. This is the decade of change, and we must figure out the narratives that we want to tell to bring connection and possibility to people. It’s a fact that making people feel bad for drinking water out of plastic bottles isn’t going to solve the environmental crisis. I think we must weave things together to make things better, not just to make profit because we can’t shrink ourselves to greatness. Why are people not shouting from the rooftops that solar power is cheaper than coal?
The hardest part of marketing meetings is persuading people to stop trying to prove that they were right all along. Defending the business, they came in with, defending their position and all their previous decisions. I’m sure these people mean well but they are limiting the possible because they are trying to defend what got them here in the first place. Everybody knows that knowledge is power, right? Knowledge is not power, I think it’s our ability to influence people that is power, and once you know, you cannot unknow.
““Any fool can know. The point is to understand.””
Getty Images ©
I think that there are only two kinds of marketers:
1) Market chasers, and
2) Category creators
Which one are you?
Not all marketing is marketing for good. I belong to a community of marketers and change makers who believe that as most of the world’s problems depend for their resolution on forms of human cooperation, so we have a responsibility to better use marketing to create positive change. We partly do this by stepping out of our day jobs and upcycling our marketing skills in support of inspiring charities and social enterprises. We coach each other into becoming more purposeful and impactful marketers in the digital fireside. And we recognise that the systems that which we are a part of are themselves shaped by stories that we tell each other across society.
We never know the truth of anything, what we know is the story we receive. We can tell a story or not, either way, there is going to be a story told. Marketing is the art of telling a story that you are proud to make true on behalf of someone who’s going to engage with you. I don’t think that marketing by its nature hurts society, in fact, I can think of many examples where it helps.
Here is a list of questions I will ask during the discovery phase:
· Who are your customers and what are their needs and expectations?
· How is your marketing strategy going to deliver on your business strategy?
· What unique value are you providing?
· How do you support it with content?
· How will you actively place your message in front of the right people?
· Why should anyone care or take notice?
· How do you communicate about your product and services?
· What is your customer journey?
· What data do you need to support your marketing?
· How can I help you improve?
Contact me via e-mail for a meeting about measuring and optimising your marketing performance?
What is marketing and what can we use it to achieve?
Marketing is about making things better by making better things. Marketing isn’t about hype; marketing isn’t about hustle and marketing isn’t about selfish short-term narcissists seeking to maximise profit in a misguided capitalistic sort of way. My mission is to continue narrating and guiding other people do the heavy lifting of persistently and consistently making things better. And because I am not shouting from the rooftops about what I am doing or how I helped this or that organisation, it appears that I don’t do anything. Metaphorically speaking, I know how to step by step put a stake in the ground, so they fit in an arc and not necessarily in perfect order.
Probability is a much healthier conversation than if I was to speak about risk, as the word risk conjures up a negative picture. The first rule of mathematics and statistics is that if there is anything unrepresentative about your sample set, you’ve got to compensate for it. And with marketing we tend to look at what happened last year rather than what’s going to happen next year, or in 5 years’ time. What we deal with as marketers is the future, and the future is to some degree unknowable. In fact, the only thing you can say with any certainty is the future is going to be very different from the past.
The speed at which change occurs varies, in some cases last year will be very similar to this year and in other times you may for example have a pandemic or a global inflation crisis, which means the future is unrecognisably different. The butterfly effect is the idea that small things can have non-linear impacts on a complex system. In other words, the butterfly effect rests on the notion that the world is deeply interconnected, such that one small occurrence can influence a much larger complex system.
Marketing isn’t advertising or hype, it’s not shortcutting, it’s not selfish, it’s not pushing people to do things they don’t want to do! I define marketing as work that matters for people who care. It’s the work of making things better, doing things that you are proud of. I think marketing isn't about selling products; it's about solving problems and creating value for your customers.
· Do not brag about how busy you are, instead let your work speak for itself.
· Do not brag about how much you know, instead teach others.
· Do not brag about who you know, instead connect like-minded people.
· Do not brag about the past, instead celebrate the present.
