If you’ve taken any business class in college, you’ve likely learned about the 4 Ps of the marketing mix: Product, Price, Place, Promotion. I think everyone can agree that this is a bit antiquated due to the rise of the digital transformation giving marketers more of an opportunity to personalize their campaigns. In my over 20 years experience working for high growth companies, I’ve learned a lot about driving demand for products and services and the most fundamental piece (P) I believe to be to any marketing campaign is the Persona.
When a client approaches me with the goal to generate demand for their product, they tell me all about their product and all that it has to offer – they’re proud of their product and rightfully so. However, I always ask “who cares?” Who is using this product and why. You can have the greatest, the fastest, the nicest product but if you can’t define who your persona is and why they should care, you risk wasting marketing dollars.
Companies can easily get internally focused and wrapped up in marketing their product that they might go to market without doing the due diligence of researching their persona. You risk losing marketing dollars without understanding that persona. So my approach is to start with the following:
Who – Who is your buyer persona?
What – What benefits does your product bring?
Why – Why do they care? What problem is your product solving for?
The “How” comes through understanding your buyer persona which I’ll discuss in the next fundamental marketing Tidbit. To end, I’ll leave you with one of my favorite marketing quotes:
“We need to put ourselves in the shoes of our customers. That is my new battle cry. Live and breathe Starbucks the way our customers do.”
Howard Schultz, Former CEO of Starbucks