Understand your customers better than yourself: The first step toward successful marketing in the digital age
The success of a company depends decisively on the purchasing decisions of its target customer groups. It is the task of marketing to make the value of a purchase decision recognizable to the right people. Nevertheless, many self-employed professionals and entrepreneurs struggle to make effective decisions regarding the marketing of their offerings. In many cases, overwhelm and actionism are the result.
Doing something is usually (!) better than not being (digitally) present at all, but it rarely leads to long-term success.
But which principles can you rely on in marketing, and which fundamental strategic approaches arise from them? What does customer-centric marketing look like in the digital age? How can you gain clarity despite the opaque decision-making processes of potential customers and employees? You will find initial answers in this article. More answers will follow.
Why your marketing is increasingly losing its impact
Marketing measures that rely solely on tactics and supposed “hacks” are usually not worth the effort. SEO, ads, TikTok, or some other isolated measure is supposed to fix everything. While this may occasionally lead to quick wins, it rarely contributes to systematic customer or employee acquisition. And certainly not to long-term brand building.
Often you hear: “Just do it. No one really knows what works anyway, so you can only experiment.”
Far more important, however, would be to focus on human behavior and strategic questions: What can we truly rely on, and what makes the difference in the long term?
Before we take a closer look at the human decision-making processes underlying the purchase of a product or service, we should first consider the environment in which we operate today and how it influences buying behavior.
As we have already explained in detail in this article, the digital age leads to a massive overflow of information and drastically influences our communication and behavior.
This includes our purchasing decisions.
Increasing competitive intensity and the overwhelming abundance of offerings lead to sensory overload, overwhelm, and a general aversion to advertising.
Our mechanisms for filtering (ir)relevant information are more in demand than ever. As a consequence of the countless information sources we are confronted with daily, these filters are becoming increasingly fine-meshed.
The difficulty of gaining the attention of your stakeholders is increasing.
The effectiveness of marketing measures is declining.
Human insight and customer centering: The keys to your marketing success
To succeed in this environment, companies must focus on their target groups and align their offerings with their needs and demands.
But it’s not just the offerings that must be aligned with the target group. Communication, in particular, must be emotionally appealing in order to spark attention, interest, and demand.
Substance alone is increasingly no longer enough to stand out. Only when the value of an offering becomes recognizable even to a stranger and leads to a purchase decision does marketing fulfill its function.
Human psychology is the most important foundation of marketing, advertising, and PR — in short, communication. It is therefore worthwhile to become familiar with key psychological principles. Only then do you stand a chance of reaching the right people with the right messages despite dense and fragmented markets.
Answering the following questions is a good starting point to increase the effectiveness of your marketing activities:
- Who are the people we can help best with our offerings?
- What does the life context of these people look like, and which unresolved problems and unmet needs do they describe?
- What requirements arise from this for our offerings?
- What benefits can we provide to these people?
- How can we make the value of our offerings tangible for these people?
The seduction of consumers through advertising and propaganda
In the past, individuals such as Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays, and Walter Lippmann had a significant influence on politics and business through new scientific insights. Their task was to create demand for the mass production of consumer goods. To do so, it was necessary to understand how people make purchasing decisions and how they can be influenced accordingly.
The following documentary provides highly fascinating insights into the development of human buying behavior. It becomes clear that the increasing consumerism of recent decades (alongside technological progress) was only possible because marketing and propaganda became more effective through new insights into human psychology.
This shows how susceptible we are as human beings to influence — and what consequences this has for society as a whole. The potential for benefit and the risk of misuse have always been closely intertwined.
The documentary “The Century of the Self” makes it clear:
- that only companies that make use of the latest insights stand a chance of survival.
- that it is no longer sufficient to build marketing on yesterday’s mental models.
- that it is the responsibility of every company to use knowledge about human nature for good purposes.
Human insights have always been used for both good and bad purposes. Only with the invention of the internet has it changed who is able to distinguish between the two. Through the availability of information and the possibilities for autonomous networking, the balance of power between providers and consumers has shifted.
In the 20th century, only a few individuals and organizations could make use of scientific knowledge. What was available for purchase — and how it was offered — was largely determined by what companies were able and willing to produce. In many areas, demand exceeded supply. Power lay with the few providers who could leverage technological and psychological insights to win over as many consumers as possible. The path toward a consumer society was paved.
At the same time, consumers have become more aware of manipulation through advertising and propaganda, and their perception filters have become more refined. Supplier-driven markets have turned into buyer-driven markets, where informational and decision-making power lies with the consumer.
Companies are therefore more dependent than ever on gaining insights into the life contexts of their target groups in order to reach them through communication.
