Truth 3
Old Truth, Marketing can help a business grow by giving customer what they say they want.
After Covid, Marketing can support growth by really understanding what customers actually need and help deliver it.
There is an old adage along the lines that if an organisation wants to know the secret to business growth, it should ask its customers. And why not? Marketing is, after all, neatly defined as the process for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements, profitably.
Marketing has the ability to connect what the consumer needs with what the organisation can deliver, and, in my experience, the most effective marketers play the role of the customer, trying to understand their customers’ needs through penetrating data insights and regular qualitative and quantitative feedback. Such marketers use these learnings to test and learn, tailoring products and service offerings accordingly. They are also typically the “voice of the customer” in their organisations, reminding colleagues across all business areas that, over the longer-term, it is customer satisfaction drives sustainable profitability and revenue growth.
Earlier this year I came across a good example of marketing striving to better understand customers’ needs in the case of online florist Bloom & Wild. It takes a brave flower company to refuse to stock red roses on Valentine’s Day, but Bloom & Wild’s research suggested that red roses are not actually that well received by recipients. Insight suggested a majority of the population (58%) think that red roses are cliché, and an even bigger proportion (78%) would prefer to receive a more thoughtful gift on Valentine’s Day.
Understanding the real user of the product or service here, rather than the actual purchaser can drive a very different proposition and indeed, different result. This is also true in many B2B scenarios, where the buyer can actually be removed from the actual user and perhaps doesn’t understand their underlying needs as well as they might think. This is where ‘sellers’ can, but often don’t, demonstrate their understanding the underlying needs of users and highlight what is important to them.
By using data from current users it is possible to use deep insight to display your deep understanding and how this has shaped your proposition and user experience during and after any sales process. It proves the deep, rather than superficial understanding of the customer and there underlying needs. Sometimes this level of understanding can be even greater than the customer themselves.
This though can only be obtained with an authentic passion for understanding customers. Something which is embedded within the systems, processes, people and most importantly culture of an organisation. This goes beyond conducting market research, it’s using multiple sources and data points to understand what is going on. A doctor wouldn’t simply ask what their patient (customer) wants alone. They use information available to them in order to diagnose the situation and set out an appropriate course of action.
Steve Jobs, once quoted the famous Henry Ford quote where his customers if asked would only ask for faster horses. Some take this as license to ignore customer research and stubbornly set out with a conviction that your product is good and customers need to just catch up. But what this misses is that both Steve Jobs and Henry Ford understood what customers really needed. Henry Ford from his own experiences saw how cheap, reliable transport could change America forever. Whereas Steve Jobs said ‘ Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page’. Using insight to read between the lines and predict new trends, needs and behaviours.
Marketing is uniquely positioned to act as the voice of the customer in both business-to-consumer and business-to-business brands, anticipating customers’ and prospective customers’ future needs and agitating for business plans that champion customer engagement. A customer-centric mindset is a strong platform to deliver sustainable, profitable growth.