DMN3 Blog

I keep a number of sayings in front of me as I work. Some of them may sound trivial. In fact they are really profound...

They put in a nutshell some of the most important maxims of marketing. The ones on the wall in front of me as I am writing this include:

• “Become my Customer”
• “What’s in it for Me?”
• “So What?”

Each of these questions is worthy of its own thesis. Instead I will provide my thoughts on each in these in this and the following posts on this blog. In this and future blog posts I will often use nautical metaphors to explain my point. Why?...because I like boating!

Back to “Become my Customer.” A bearing is the direction of an object from where we are now. If that object is our intended destination, then we want to set our course to that bearing. In marketing the object is always the customer’s desires. The more we "become our customer", the better we are able to plot the right course, avoiding hazards, to satisfy their desires. 

The result is that the customer takes the action we would like with our online communications. Be it a website, email, or other online marketing vehicle that we use to make our case, getting inside the mind of the customer is an essential part of setting our course.

In future posts I will discuss some ways to gain customer insight. My intent here is that you understand that getting into the mind of your target audience is essential if you are to achieve your business objective and arrive at your destination point.

Why do I dwell upon the “mindset” of the customer? It’s because marketing is about appealing to emotions in the mind of your target market or audience. The more you align your “offer” to their desires and needs, the better the response you will receive to it. It is these desires that motivate them to take action. While there are a lot of studies on identifying the specific desires that motivate human behavior, desires basically fall into two needs;

• the desire to gain pleasure
• the desire to avoid pain.

Your online of offline offer must appeal to one of these two basic needs. The more successful you are at framing your product or services in a way that deals with those desires and needs, the more successful you will be in getting results.

Your job is to pinpoint a problem that your target market segment has that can be solved by your offer, make sure they recognize their problem, and persuade them that it can be solved by your particular product or service.

We do all of this by using empathy and building a rapport with our intended audience. Empathy is defined as the capacity to understand, be aware of, be sensitive to, and vicariously experience the feelings, thoughts and experiences of someone else.

We let them know that we understand their problem. Viewing things from their perspective (empathy) allows us to establish rapport with them. The better rapport we have, the more persuasive we can be and the more your customers will come to trust usand agree with what we tell them. Over time your customers will come to feel that you have their best interests at heart and will come to be more trusting of you and will more easily accept your offers.

Happy Marketing and Boating!