UnShackle Marketing
Current Marketing iIsn't Helping Bootstrappers
Current State Of Marketing
Their marketing spend is not giving them returns. Their marketing agencies are aware about the non-performance.
Performance marketing is not marketing. Churning out weekly reels is not marketing. Organising meet-ups is not marketing. Sending WhatsApp messages is not marketing. Even social media metrics such as views, likes and shares are not marketing.
The core of marketing is to understand the wants and needs of the customers. Without it everyone is shooting in the dark. The current state of marketing is similar to winning a lottery. Only a few can get lucky. A brand reel may go viral. It becomes the template for every subsequent reel. Getting lucky can not be the strategy. What if the customers of the brand do not consume reels. What if they spend more time with the physical newspapers. Isn’t that the waste of time and money?
Know Thy Customers
Knowing your customers is a superpower. It’s like having a map. One can go to their favourite places as per their needs, wants and capabilities. Without map one has to rely on someone, who claims to know the road to destination. Instead, most bootstrappers hire an agency, which promises to deliver the results brands do not need. A year old brand will not grow by posting reels. A publication will not get more subscribers by hiring a manager. A cafe will not attract more customers by hiring a community manager and doing Instagram Live. Agencies get into a never-ending cycle of pitching for new ideas and then justifying them to the clients. In the end, they part ways to start the same cycle.
You Are Not Your User
There is a better way for both. It starts by a simple act of changing the way we look at ourselves. Golden rule of marketing says we are not our customers. We are not our users. The most important thing is to learn to look at our brands, businesses, service or products from the eyes of our customers or users. It changes everything. It is called marketing orientation.
What We Think Vs What They Perceive
While we think of our business as the pathbreaking one, our customers do not see it in the same way. I may think of coffees at my cafe as specialty or third wave, but my customers want warm coffee with a cake. While I think of my article as an insight for marketing, readers may only want to read it to grow their business. Blue Tokai may want its customers to treat it as Mecca for coffee, but they think of it as a premium co-working space.
Start With Marketing Orientation
The first step is to diagnose the existing focus versus the marketing orientation. Some only focus on increasing users. Some focus on increasing sales. Some focus on launching new products. Some focus on running ads on Youtube, social media or Instagram. Some only focus on predicting the future. The more a brand is focussed on one of the above, the less they look at themselves from the eyes of their customers.
Do three things to start:
Identify three existing customers or users.
Ask three questions: when did you become the customer? What is your favourite thing about the brand? What is one thing which they want you to improve?
Share the feedback with the team.
Going forward you can ask more questions about their usage of your product. You can ask about their favourite brands. You can ask what is that no one is providing. The more you show interest in them, the more they reveal.
Marketing orientation opens the gates for changing the marketing strategy. It leads to market research, which helps us know the most important segment of the customers. It helps us decide which products fit for them. Then it helps us differentiate from the competitors. One can set the right objective. It leads to using the tools of marketing such as pricing, communication and distribution.
Join Free Workshop
Every Sunday I share my learning of marketing and building a coffee business with the help of marketing fundamentals. I focus on bootstrappers, who are building a small business. They do not have to become a marketer, but understand how marketing helps their brands. Then they can collaborate with agencies and marketers better.
Marketing Orientation Workshop: Link