Where should you start with brand marketing?
The main levers of business growth:
Resources > Products > Marketing
Where should you start fixing things when something is going wrong? 
Companies now tend to come to me
with the following objectives:
- Improve the effectiveness of marketing efforts;
- Optimise the marketing budget.
The starting point should be an audit.
First, analyse the target audience.
Gender, age and location alone will not give us a meaningful understanding of it.
I have written a number of posts about this on my social media page; you can find them further down.
Today, I want to discuss the next
and often most important stage of the audit: PMF.
Product–market fit is the match between a product and the expectations of its target audience.
Literally,
it means the fit between a product and its market.
A business has found product–market fit
when customers buy the product and tell other people about it, generating
growth and profit for the business.
Who needs it, and why?
Start-ups:
To determine whether the company can enter the market and win an audience.
Established companies:
To improve an existing product.
Anyone experiencing weak sales,
customer churn
or difficulty attracting new customers.
How do you achieve product–market fit?
- Study the customer:
Who are these people?
What do they do?
What interests them?
How do they live?
What are their needs and fears?
It is also important to establish
what motivates the customer to buy the product.
What task
will it help them accomplish?
For this, we use
the Jobs to Be Done framework.
The approach aims to identify the underlying customer needs that the company's product can address.
This helps the company determine which product characteristics matter
and identify competitors that may not be immediately obvious.
Jobs to Be Done (JTBD) is based on the idea that people buy products for the outcomes they expect them to deliver: the jobs they need to get done.
A common example illustrates the JTBD concept:
A typical customer does not need a 15 mm drill bit.
They need a 15 mm hole in the wall.
Their need is for the outcome,
rather than the particular product.
Why use Jobs to Be Done?
The main aim is to identify the underlying customer needs that the company's product can fulfil.
Develop a new product.
Understanding why a customer comes to the company can help develop new business areas.
For example, a psychology practice offering one-hour online consultations discovered that part of its audience needed ongoing support rather than one-off help.
It developed a new service for those customers: the option to message a psychologist at any time of day.
Improve an existing product.
In the previous example, the findings could instead be used to update the existing service. Individual consultations could be sold in packages and take place more frequently than once a week,
perhaps three or four times.
Find your audience.
Once customers' real needs are identified, it may become clear that the company is not meeting them. In some cases, finding a different audience is easier than changing the product.
For example:
A gym targets women with children. It assumes their need is to get back into shape after childbirth, so all training and equipment are designed for that purpose. Advertising works and those women do come, but they soon stop attending.
The reason is that their underlying need is a break from routine. A swimming pool, sauna and light, enjoyable dance sessions would be more likely to retain them than intensive, systematic recovery training.
In this situation, it may be easier for the company to find a different audience than to build a pool and spa, replace equipment and recruit new trainers. It might, for example, try attracting people returning to fitness after injury,
or those seeking support for their health while living with an ongoing condition such as scoliosis.
Identify hidden competitors.
Market analysis usually considers direct and indirect competition. Direct competitors sell the same thing as you; indirect competitors sell a substitute, or a similar product to a different audience.
If you sell hot dogs, you probably consider your competitors to be:
- Other hot-dog stands;
- Places selling burgers and shawarma;
- Businesses selling children's or vegan hot dogs.
Examining customers' underlying motivation may reveal that people often buy a hot dog for reasons other than wanting a quick, inexpensive meal.
Instead,
the desire may arise from a lack of positive emotions, which an impulse purchase helps replenish.
This allows you to consider a much broader set of competitors.
For example, if the stand is in a shopping centre near shops selling inexpensive little treats, some potential customers may go to those shops instead.
They spend the money they might have spent on a hot dog
on a pretty bowl for their cat, a fun notebook or a couple of bath bombs.
They have already received a quick positive emotion
— a brief dopamine reward —
from that purchase,
so they no longer need your product.
Find effective positioning.
JTBD can reveal why customers actually choose your product, help you understand its key advantage in their eyes and build your marketing around it.
For example, a medical centre may believe its main strength is its doctors' qualifications.
Its advertising emphasises that, while most visitors choose it for the attractive surroundings, comfort
and proximity to home.
Potential patients who would value those benefits simply do not know about them.
Local advertising displaying the address and professional photographs of the interior could help attract them.
How data are collected for JTBD:
- Through JTBD interviews with your target audience,
for example by sending out questionnaires.
This brings us back to the target audience: I am often concerned by how frequently marketing is aimed at the wrong people. 🫣
My strong recommendation::
Conduct research through your CRM, among people who have already bought your product or service and generated revenue for the company, rather than only among social media followers.
There is an important distinction:
An active social media blog often builds a fan community
of people who enjoy your content,
share your values,
appreciate your sense of humour
and relate to your outlook on life,
but may lack either the budget or the need for your product.
Important:
Distinguish the brand's fan community
from its target audience.
I will send the list of key questions for
JTBD analysis
to everyone
who shares this post on their social media page and sends me a direct message
with the word “questionnaire”.
Your brand expert,
Maria Zavyalova