Marketing done right: meeting the emotional needs of the customer.
These past few months working in marketing, I’ve come to learn that all great marketing strategies appeal to customers’ emotions.
We’ve been in business for 6 months, and like most startups, it’s been a rollercoaster of ups and downs, where I’ve been able to learn a lot about marketing.
The business started with a target customer in mind. However, after hearing what the market really needs, we’ve had to adapt quickly. I’ve come to learn this one of the most important things in a business. You HAVE to validate that what you’re offering is actually in demand. If it’s not, you have to move fast and adapt.
Once you’ve validated a market need, it’s time to tell the world that you have a solution. This is what marketing is all about. You have to be able to communicate to potential clients why, and most importantly how, what you offer is going to solve a problem they have.
I’ve read about this multiple times now, with different opinions about how to approach a future customer, or how to convince them of buying. And one thing they have in common is: concentrate your communication efforts on appealing to your customers’ emotions.
Your customer has to be your number one priority. You have to know who he/she is, what problems they have (related to your product/service), what solutions they’ve been given and what their lives would be if that problem is solved. All this research has to be done to avoid the mistake of having false knowledge of the customer. Having false knowledge can be worse than having no knowledge at all, because you’re being ignorant while not being aware of it, guiding you to a misleading marketing and communication strategy, and not being able to sell your product.
I recently read that, as a marketer, everything that your customer will see or listen about the company has to convince them to make an action (in a subtle way of course). But everything must call them to an action, either of buying or making an appointment, but it has to have the goal of encouraging them to start a conversation with you.
But, how do you do this? In my experience, marketing is about meeting the emotional needs of the customer. You won’t convince someone that your product is ‘the best’ just by telling them the features it has. You convince them by making them see what their life would be if they tried the product, who they would become if they experienced what you offer.
First you have to have a clear answer to the question: “who do you want your customer to become”. How is his or her life now versus how do you want their lives to be? Once you know this, you will be able to communicate this in different ways, on every communication channel you own. Your customers will be more motivated to consume and spend money on your business, because you made it easier for them to imagine the experience.
At Buildawow, we’re now targeting tech companies in the US and Canada who are interested in lowering the software development costs. We do this by offering them access to a curated team of talented software developers, managed by our team of Technical Project Managers in Miami and Guatemala City. A typical recruiting process takes about 2–3 months, while we are able to shorten that to 2–4 weeks. Also, given the cost-of-living arbitrage between many top technology hubs and Guatemala, we’re able to offer better costs, and a much better value.
We don’t compromise quality of work, and we solve the problem of the customer. And the way of convincing them of this, is not to tell them that “we are the best at what we do” or “we are cheaper than…”, but to show them the work we’ve done up until now, the website or app we could create for them, the processes that could be digitalized and automated (…). Long story short, we don’t focus on the problem itself, we focus on the solution, on how the business will be if they worked with us.
Before starting any business, you have to validate this. A common error when starting a business is that we don’t validate if what we offer is actually what people are looking for, because we are blindsided by our own idea, going back to the mistake of having false knowledge of the customer. That’s why creating the picture of their life with the problem solved (by you) is important not only to come up with, but mostly to share, ask around and convince people (validate, validate, validate!) before you spend a lot of money on it.
We still have tons to learn at Buildawow, but we’re now confident that we’re solving a real market need, with a solution that appeals to our customers emotions.