From .. “Marketing is about VALUES - Steve Jobs Rule #9 of 10”.. and NEEDS

… marketing is all about values… and needs. Values of a product or service are not features, but things that when we close our eyes, we can feel them as ours.

…..What values mean for each of our customers, it depends on what are their needs. Needs can be so many, from work to personal but then, the capability to cover them, it depend on what we are selling. From components for a machine to a cream for the skin. Maybe the most famous hierarchy of needs is the one from Maslow, but we can have others related to the products and if we dig into each product, for sure we will find others.

All is based on needs and to understand these needs (Business Intelligence). Why a customer should buy our product instead of another? If our product is not solving better the needs of our customer, but it is only similar to many others, maybe then everything will be on price. Our product can be perceived as a commodity. But also in this case, then, other factors will influence the customers, and these factors are not on product but on personal side. They don’t know you, and it can create a sort of “do I trust you? I am ok with my supplier. Do I have to risk and change?” Personal relations are the key point for the business, but surely fundamental when your product is not really so different from others.

What happen if customer relations are no more there? If the place you are selling, is no more physical? If all you know about your customer is a mail? Also here we find the needs, and values and perceptions and feelings. I open a webpage and something should happen in my brain. With my imagination. If I open a webpage that is similar to thousands of others, I skip it in maybe 10 seconds or less. We are so used to internet now, that if I cannot find a webpage I think that a company maybe is not good enough or even does not exist. If the communication is not good enough to let us imagine and feeling the values, we will just skip it and continue our research. The reaction is faster and faster because the information are so many. (It not up to me now to judge if this way of thinking is correct or not, or is superficial or not. But it happens every day).

There are situations when we are selling a product with our brand the first time. Nobody know us and our product. In this case, we, more than anyone else have to believe in our dream, in our ideas, in our product and service and we have to put all the best in the communication to let others feel the passion that brought us to put this product in the market. We have to take the hand of our customer and bring him in our world... the customer is buying our way to see the things, our concept, our point of view and then..our product.

On the other hand, there are Brands and product well known. They are selling products that everyone are doing, but we recognize them fast. Because they are working on values and feeling, and even if the world is changing so much, and so fast, core values are always the same.

For sure, the way we communicate and the places where we communicate are changing, but these values are the same. And we recognize our self so much in what they let us feeling. No matter if languages are different, they work on our feelings. They touch cords that are behind our cognition, behind all the barriers we can have.

So, if it is good to cover the customer needs. Even better is if you can understand and see the needs that also your customers don’t know to have, or they don’t recognize as “needs”. To anticipate or create needs.

We are all living in a world generated from someone that anticipated a need. Someone created it, that was much more beyond, and this is my though, from their most optimistic expectations. They touched the need of communication. They opened a new world, a virtual world of communication that has no limits because is based on our imagination. And if we imagine something we can do it.

How many of my generation were thinking to spend time on a phone, when we were at the age of 20? Nobody.

But then, communicating in a world that is so fast in changes, in the way we communicate and in the place where we communicate, how we can reach our customers with our products and how to be different from thousands of competitors?

I think a possible answer is “Don’t cheat your customer”, be professional, take on your responsibilities, bring your fundamental values on top of your marketing activities and find the best way to communicate them to all. Stay always on your core values, and bring your passion with you, everyday. Be out of the box, maybe a dreamer, but never give up if you thing that you can change this world in a better way.