Interview with Stijn Demeersseman on why focusing on the product prevents marketers from thinking about the customer.
What trends will shape marketing in the next few years?
Everyone is talking about AI and how it will change our work, our lives and the way we acquire knowledge. The generations currently working will be the most affected. We will be working for 50-60 years – this will translate into the change of three different professions, or roughly three generations.
As a Gen Xer, I can already see the impact of AI on my industry and many others. We grew up without iPhones, but we embraced them oman mobile phone numbers database so we have to embrace AI too – it’s up to every generation to keep up with technology. AI will change the way brands can improve customer experiences and customer service.
How do you win the hearts and minds of younger generations fascinated by without losing the older ones?
This isn’t as difficult as it may seem. Over the past few years, we’ve learned to adapt our messages depending on the medium and target audience.
It’s not worth simply dividing audiences into age groups, though, because some 50-year-olds are more digitally savvy than some 25-year-olds. Age isn’t the only differentiating factor—technologies are already advanced enough that we can tailor messages to people who use , or print media.
There is a stereotype that half of the marketing budget is spent badly, but we don’t know which exactly. Well, actually we are starting to know more and more, and our understanding of targeting is getting deeper. We are more precisely understanding what specific message works for which customers, at what time, delivered by which media and so on.
How to select communication channels for target groups?
It depends on the brand’s goal. If the goal is brand awareness, for example, if you’re launching a new soda, you’ll probably choose media with a wide reach – such as TV, print, or large online portals.
Once you have a certain level of brand awareness, you start to focus on specific audiences and want them to buy your product. So you choose your media channels accordingly.
There are many channels for reaching customers, such as retail media, social media, and email marketing. They should be selected according to the message and the goal. Retail media will be very effective when the main goal is to transform marketing into sales. In the cosmetics industry, we most often focus on visual media, such as digital accessibility: brazil has only 1% of websites with accessibility while for a scientifically oriented industry, it is worth choosing the printed press or the brand’s own website.
It all depends on the brand, its purpose and its key message – but even the same brand may use different media depending on the stage of the product lifecycle.
Have influencers changed the way marketing looks today?
Yes, very much so. I worked in Asia for a while and I can tell you that the Western world has not seen anything yet. In Asia, it is all about influencers and live streaming.
When we talk about influencers, it’s not just the Kardashians and the big names, but also micro-influencers. So the question for a brand is how to choose the right influencers to work with, because an influencer can also negatively affect the value of your brand.
How can CMOs better understand CEOs?
Marketing is the heart of a business. Businesses start with an idea, product or service – the primary task of a marketer is to introduce it to the market and build a brand.
If you want to be a successful corporate marketer benin lists you need to think holistically and work with other parts of the company. The better you can align your own goals with the company’s goals, the more influence you will have on corporate strategy.
You may have heard about this big divide between marketing and sales and how these two different corporate functions don’t get along. But every good organization needs to have both a strong brand and a well-developed commercial component. This symbiosis is important.
Next comes the financial part. You need to understand how a CFO thinks when you’re building your marketing strategy. You need to put yourself in the shoes of the CFO, and also the CFO of the company you’re trying to sell your product to.
In your course, stock a new soda you talk about the product-centric and customer-centric perspectives. What is the difference?
It’s about features versus benefits. If you’re a product-driven company, you think about your product, its features, its ingredients, its packaging, etc. So you defend its features, often forgetting about the benefits to your customer.
When moving from product to market, the question is always: what do customers gain? The more you think about what the end customer gains, the easier it is to bring a product to market.
We also need to differentiate between the end customer and the buyer. The buyer is the person who shops in the market. There is also the distributor who sells the product. You need to ask yourself why would supermarkets want to sell your product? Why sell a new soda when there are so many? Before you can reach the end consumer, you need to reach the distributor and the buyer.
The shopper is the person who walks into a store and wants to buy your product. There are a variety of factors that will affect the decision-making process – it could be pricing, or it could be the need to buy something because the customer is traveling but wouldn’t buy it on a Saturday. Being able to tailor your message to different stores, different shopping missions, or even the day of the week is important .
Marketers may think of a product reaching the end consumer as a linear process, but many things can influence the decision-making – including the decisions made by the distributor (supermarket) and the buyer.
How to move from a product-centric to a consumer-centric approach?
You have to keep your finger on the pulse. Study consumers, customers and buyers.
Research is expensive, but it doesn’t have to be. It can be a focus group where you invite 10 consumers – even one conversation can provide you with a lot of valuable insights. The same applies to research on shopper behavior: you can go to the store with a shopper and observe how they behave, why they buy something or not. Not every brand needs eye-tracking research or very expensive research.