Every successful company is characterized by repeatedly finding ways to capture the attention of the right people, spark their interest, and create demand for the solutions offered.
In the long term, this can only succeed if the offering convinces and meets customer expectations. This substance is the necessary and best prerequisite for effective marketing, but on its own it is increasingly insufficient to attract enough suitable customers.
Even companies that have previously managed without marketing are slowly but surely feeling the effects of a dynamic, dense, and highly fragmented competitive environment. Unlimited access to markets and information leads to low entry barriers on the company side, resulting in more alternative offers to choose from. At the same time, customers enjoy greater market transparency, enabling them to make purchasing decisions largely on their own.
Without effective marketing, no company can survive in the long term—let alone grow. Business owners who in the past did not have to actively deal with marketing often still underestimate its importance and possibilities in terms of business development.
Marketing and business success are tied to two essential criteria:
- Only if enough people show interest in our offering, recognize its value for themselves (B2C) or their company (B2B), and are willing to pay for it, can value creation be sustained in the long term.
- To achieve this, the right people with the right problems must be reached communicatively and won as customers. Only then can the value promise be consistently fulfilled and the value-creating contribution of all parties be enabled.
Our challenge, therefore, is to reach the right people (customers, employees, partners, society), at the right time, in the right place, with the right messages, so that they can convince themselves of our value proposition.
It sounds simple—but it is not. People’s available attention is extremely limited, and filters in the digital world are becoming increasingly refined. And for good reason: to cope with the multitude of information available, we rely on our filters and interpretation aids, which reduce all incoming signals to a manageable level. Our subjective filters help us block out what is irrelevant and consciously perceive what is relevant to us. As we will see, these filters are primarily emotional in nature.
Given the endless flood of irrelevant data and substance-free offers, there is only one way to gain the attention and trust of our target groups despite all the noise: we must offer real added value and, above all, reach customers emotionally so that they can recognize the benefit of the offering for themselves in the first place.
Companies that do not engage in marketing leave customers alone with the burden of choice instead of helping them decide on the best option and avoid substance-free offers.
From a customer-centered perspective, marketing and sales become a moral obligation—especially in times of widespread charlatanism. After all, for many things today we no longer pay with money, but with our attention and personal data.
Companies that do not make the quality of their offerings visible to outsiders, that neglect brand positioning, and that fail to create attractive expectations among their ideal customers leave valuable business potential untapped—and thereby strengthen the competition.
Substantial solutions to relevant problems as the best foundation for successful marketing
The less substance there is behind something, the more it must appear from the outside as if there were a lot behind it. This is one of the reasons why people develop an aversion to marketing and sales.
At the same time—it seems to me—it is precisely those people and companies who prove the quality of their offerings every single day who find it most difficult to make this substance visible to outsiders.
The bad news: it has never been easier to successfully sell nonsense. It is therefore becoming increasingly important—and more difficult—to distance oneself from substance-free offers and position oneself as a quality service provider. To reach the right customers, employees, and partners, identity-based clarity and strategic focus are required.
The good news: in the long run, only substance prevails—and those who sell nonsense are sooner or later eliminated. Enormous potential lies here for companies that deliver real added value but have not yet communicated this in a customer-centered and brand-consistent way.
Without marketing, added value usually remains reserved for those who have already recognized the benefit of the solution and the specific offering.
For the healthy development of the business and the formation of the brand, however, it is essential that relationships with new customers (and employees) continually emerge. Only then does the company remain viable and capable of survival. For resonance to arise between the company and its target groups, a fitting brand identity is required—on the basis of which attractive communication can be designed and coherent behavior can be expected.
Anyone who wants to develop sustainably and healthily as a brand and organization will find no way around continually seeking substantial solutions to relevant problems, designing them in a customer-centered way, and then effectively marketing them to the right people. Hopefully in that order.
The first prerequisite for successful marketing is therefore to (invent) something that is worth being “marked” and marketed. Behind it should stand a story worth telling. The result should be a contribution that is worth talking about. Only on this substantial foundation can effective marketing be designed.
Successful marketing is based on a profound understanding of human thinking and behavior
What most often stands in the way of successful marketing and business development is an egocentric rather than a human- and customer-centered perspective.
The question is: Is it simply about selling one’s own offerings to anyone in order to earn as much money as possible? Or is it about delivering the greatest possible benefit to the right people? If so, it is our duty to show these people the value of our offerings, support them as best as possible in their decision-making, and inspire them with our solutions.
The answer to this question begins with the underlying paradigm or personal attitude of the entrepreneur: Is the human being and shared value creation at the center—or is the human being (and thus oneself) merely a means to maximize profit?
Successful marketing depends on a genuine interest in people and their needs and can no longer do without the ability to gain valuable insights into their lifeworlds.
What complicates matters is that many people still hold outdated beliefs about how humans make (purchase) decisions. Only when we understand what emotionally moves people can we in turn move them to consider change in the form of our solution.
It is particularly crucial to understand the relationship between reason and emotion. While many still believe these are opposites—assuming that emotions stand in the way of reason and disturb rather than guide our decisions—we now know that we:
- always decide emotionally and only afterward rationalize the decision so that it aligns with our emotional needs,
- are primarily driven in every action by our emotional systems (the limbic system in our brain),
- make almost all our decisions largely unconsciously.
Hans-Georg Häusel, a pioneer of neuromarketing, speaks in his book “Think Limbic” of the old and the new way of thinking:
Old way of thinking
- Emotion is the opposite of reason.
- Reason decides, emotions disturb.
- Decisions are made consciously.
New way of thinking
- Emotions decide.
- The emotional control center in the brain is the limbic system.
- Decisions are made largely unconsciously.
Adopting and living this new way of thinking is an ongoing process—one that requires repeatedly reminding ourselves, especially in stressful or highly emotional moments, how we as humans (do not) function.
This new perspective directs our attention to the true drivers of our thoughts and behaviors. Our own assumptions and prejudices can be questioned. It will not always succeed equally well, but it will certainly help us better understand our fellow human beings—and thus our customers—and approach them with greater empathy.
