Marketing warriors, fight for thy customer!

Whenever I need a little marketing pick-me-up, I turn to this guy, The Ultimate Warrior (the nice-looking gentleman pictured to the right). A beacon of strength, courage & determination, Ultimate fought his way to the top of the World Wrestling Federation during my youth, despite the greater popularity of Hulk Hogan. Sure, much of his energy was likely derived from illicit muscle-enhancers pumping through his body, but that's beside the point.

Much the way The Ultimate Warrior fought his way to the top through his courage & determination, I am calling on all marketers to reach into their "inner Warriors" and fight for the single most important long-term success factor of any company, your customers. It's up to you to ensure that your customer remains king within your organization.

To pull a couple of quotes from the modern-day Plato of business, the late Peter Drucker, everything begins & ends with the customer:

"The purpose of a business is to create a customer"

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself"

Battling product-centric thinking
While the business world purports to live in the age of customer-centricity, I am convinced that we still live in an era of product-centered thought. There are numerous factors that underlie this, from organizational structure to the science of human cognition & our inability to hold onto abstract concepts such as needs (vs. far more concrete concepts like products or services).

While I find such topics fascinating, this post in not about exploring what cognitive science can tell us about business thinking. It's about making one thing clear to all marketers, and that is that within your organization you are the ultimate champion of the customer. And without your strong voice, your organization's long-term future may be put in jeopardy. It's a heck of a responsibility to have, which makes it all the more rewarding.

What I have attempted to do in previous posts is to introduce concepts to help us become more customer-centric in our thinking, and in our approach to business. Whether it be through the help of tools such as the purchase journal, talking to your mother, or the cultivating of your inner consumer voice, developing fluency in customer-centric thought is key to great marketing as well as successful business outcomes.

In closing, a few wisdoms for us to keep in mind

• We think about about our products 100x more often than our customers ever do. The inverse is likely true with respect to their needs.
  

• Our products are tools used by our customers to satisfy their given needs, problems or desires. Our products are a means to an end for our customers, not ends in themselves.
  

• Deep insights about consumers is the foundation upon which great new products are built. The Field of Dreams approach (i.e., "build it and they will come") generally only works in the movies.

• As humans (& marketers), we're wired in such a way that makes it easier for us to think about the concrete (i.e., our products) than the abstract (i.e., our customers' needs). Given this, we need to continuously work-out our customer-centric "muscles" to battle against our tendency to shift back to thinking about our products.
  

As always, please post your comments, questions or thoughts, or feel free to send me an email. Happy marketing, fellow Warriors.

read more

Marketing warriors, fight for thy customer!

Whenever I need a little marketing pick-me-up, I turn to this guy, The Ultimate Warrior (the nice-looking gentleman pictured to the right). A beacon of strength, courage & determination, Ultimate fought his way to the top of the World Wrestling Federation during my youth, despite the greater popularity of Hulk Hogan. Sure, much of his energy was likely derived from illicit muscle-enhancers pumping through his body, but that's beside the point.

Much the way The Ultimate Warrior fought his way to the top through his courage & determination, I am calling on all marketers to reach into their "inner Warriors" and fight for the single most important long-term success factor of any company, your customers. It's up to you to ensure that your customer remains king within your organization.

To pull a couple of quotes from the modern-day Plato of business, the late Peter Drucker, everything begins & ends with the customer:

"The purpose of a business is to create a customer"

"The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well the product or service fits him and sells itself"

Battling product-centric thinking
While the business world purports to live in the age of customer-centricity, I am convinced that we still live in an era of product-centered thought. There are numerous factors that underlie this, from organizational structure to the science of human cognition & our inability to hold onto abstract concepts such as needs (vs. far more concrete concepts like products or services).

While I find such topics fascinating, this post in not about exploring what cognitive science can tell us about business thinking. It's about making one thing clear to all marketers, and that is that within your organization you are the ultimate champion of the customer. And without your strong voice, your organization's long-term future may be put in jeopardy. It's a heck of a responsibility to have, which makes it all the more rewarding.

What I have attempted to do in previous posts is to introduce concepts to help us become more customer-centric in our thinking, and in our approach to business. Whether it be through the help of tools such as the purchase journal, talking to your mother, or the cultivating of your inner consumer voice, developing fluency in customer-centric thought is key to great marketing as well as successful business outcomes.

In closing, a few wisdoms for us to keep in mind

• We think about about our products 100x more often than our customers ever do. The inverse is likely true with respect to their needs.
  

• Our products are tools used by our customers to satisfy their given needs, problems or desires. Our products are a means to an end for our customers, not ends in themselves.
  

• Deep insights about consumers is the foundation upon which great new products are built. The Field of Dreams approach (i.e., "build it and they will come") generally only works in the movies.

• As humans (& marketers), we're wired in such a way that makes it easier for us to think about the concrete (i.e., our products) than the abstract (i.e., our customers' needs). Given this, we need to continuously work-out our customer-centric "muscles" to battle against our tendency to shift back to thinking about our products.
  

As always, please post your comments, questions or thoughts, or feel free to send me an email. Happy marketing, fellow Warriors.

read more

Your product's lemming factor: are you following your competitors off a cliff?

I have seen it happen time & time again... and it always reminds me of the psychology of crowds, and how the individuals within the crowds assume their fellow crowd-members know something they don't know. So the individual continues to follow the crowd, all the while not realizing that the crowd is often an amalgam of equally confused individuals...

The Lemming Effect
Ok, enough of the philo-babble. The "lemming effect" as I call it is no doubt present within many organizations, and all of us at one time or another fall into its trap. Its influence within product management & product development is pervasive, frequently resulting in products that get bulkier & costlier over time. But we would be remiss to equate the proliferation of bells, whistles & "performance enhancers" with greater levels of customer value.

There are many drivers of the phenomenon of "Frankensteining" a product, and the lemming effect is at the top of the list. It all starts when we become more focused on our competitors than on our customers. One day Acme, our arch rival, increases the performance of its product or adds a new feature. "Hmmm", we think to ourselves, "What does Acme know that we don't? Are customers demanding greater levels of performance?" And then, voila, with limited thought or analysis we quickly 'upgrade' our product. Acme no doubts catches wind of our "2.0", and the arms race ensues.

All the while, our customers might not even be looking for the increased performance or the new bell or whistle. Perhaps our target customer looks a little different from Acme's target customer, and have somewhat differing needs. Perhaps Acme's reason for making enhancements to its product were ill-conceived or driven by internal factors that are invisible to us. Regardless of the reason, the one thing we have successfully achieved is increasing the cost of both our product as well as Acme's, who will no doubt follow suite with their "3.0". Whether we're able to "pass along" this incremental cost to our customers in the form of higher prices is something we certainly hope we can do.

Never take your eyes off your customers
The moral of the above faux situation, and of the lemming effect in general is to be wary of the moves that your competitors make. Do not assume the moves they are making are the right ones or that they have generated an insight that has given them the secret to building the perfect service for customers. The remedy to the lemming effect is quite straightforward, yet often ignored. Stay abreast of what your competitors are doing, but keep your eye on the ball - aka, your customers! Stay close to your customers. Develop multiple channels & methods for gaining access to the "voices of your customers". Understand their needs, desires, motivations, decision-making processes, changes in their outlooks or needs, etc. If you do these things right, you will be far less vulnerable to the lemming instinct, and far more confident in product decisions that you choose to make.

read more

Your product's lemming factor: are you following your competitors off a cliff?

I have seen it happen time & time again... and it always reminds me of the psychology of crowds, and how the individuals within the crowds assume their fellow crowd-members know something they don't know. So the individual continues to follow the crowd, all the while not realizing that the crowd is often an amalgam of equally confused individuals...

The Lemming Effect
Ok, enough of the philo-babble. The "lemming effect" as I call it is no doubt present within many organizations, and all of us at one time or another fall into its trap. Its influence within product management & product development is pervasive, frequently resulting in products that get bulkier & costlier over time. But we would be remiss to equate the proliferation of bells, whistles & "performance enhancers" with greater levels of customer value.

There are many drivers of the phenomenon of "Frankensteining" a product, and the lemming effect is at the top of the list. It all starts when we become more focused on our competitors than on our customers. One day Acme, our arch rival, increases the performance of its product or adds a new feature. "Hmmm", we think to ourselves, "What does Acme know that we don't? Are customers demanding greater levels of performance?" And then, voila, with limited thought or analysis we quickly 'upgrade' our product. Acme no doubts catches wind of our "2.0", and the arms race ensues.

All the while, our customers might not even be looking for the increased performance or the new bell or whistle. Perhaps our target customer looks a little different from Acme's target customer, and have somewhat differing needs. Perhaps Acme's reason for making enhancements to its product were ill-conceived or driven by internal factors that are invisible to us. Regardless of the reason, the one thing we have successfully achieved is increasing the cost of both our product as well as Acme's, who will no doubt follow suite with their "3.0". Whether we're able to "pass along" this incremental cost to our customers in the form of higher prices is something we certainly hope we can do.

Never take your eyes off your customers
The moral of the above faux situation, and of the lemming effect in general is to be wary of the moves that your competitors make. Do not assume the moves they are making are the right ones or that they have generated an insight that has given them the secret to building the perfect service for customers. The remedy to the lemming effect is quite straightforward, yet often ignored. Stay abreast of what your competitors are doing, but keep your eye on the ball - aka, your customers! Stay close to your customers. Develop multiple channels & methods for gaining access to the "voices of your customers". Understand their needs, desires, motivations, decision-making processes, changes in their outlooks or needs, etc. If you do these things right, you will be far less vulnerable to the lemming instinct, and far more confident in product decisions that you choose to make.

read more