Marketing is ALL About Human Behavior

The 30-Second Marketing MBA

To those without a particular affinity for, background in or exposure to the mechanics of marketing, I've found that there's a quick description that seems to universally get the point across:

1. Sharing the "5 Ps" (no, not four):  Product, Price Place, Promotion -- and Personal Selling
2. Answering in detail the "question words":  Who?  What?  Where?  When?  How?  Why?  How Much?  How Often? as the skeletal structure for strategy and tactics.

Start with the Real Foundation

When folks get lost in the minutiae of these details, a great exercise is to pull the discussion back up and out to the 30K' level, the big/global picture, and talk first about brand as the first connection to company's product or service and the driver of everything it does. All decisions, messages, presentations, exposures, involvements of any customer or stakeholder with a company, are through its brand as first, most critical impression conveying:

• Who We Are
• What We Believe In
• What Your Consistent Experience with Us Will Be
• How You Will Feel Interacting with Everything About Us

We are ALL "The Customer", and Occam's Razor

I also remind non-marketers, whether they are engineers, visual designers, in operations, that EVERY PERSON INVOLVED IN A COMPANY IS POTENTIALLY "THE CUSTOMER".  My own first-hand experience has borne this out over and over again, when listening, as a fly-on-the-wall in engineering/product design meetings, to participants communicating, unknowingly, Occam's Razor, which says that, all things considered, "the simplest explanation usually tends to be the right one":

• Expressing their own frustrations and/or needs at features/usability -- and stating taglines
• Expressing the way they'd use a feature/service -- and stating value proposition
• Expressing their sum total experience of a product service -- and stating a brand name
• Suggesting a new feature/capability -- and coming up with its product/feature name

... all the while usually having no clue they've done so as it's embedded in their ongoing conversation amongst themselves.  As that fly-on-the-wall a marketer has the sweet opportunity to view otherwise private moments and detect reactions to what they're discussing/designing/developing, and comfort levels, in body language, facial expressions, voice tones.

These folks are communicating their first contact with the concept, and expressing their first, most instinctive, gut-level joys, delights, "Wow!" factors and disappointments, anxieties, warning flag concerns.  Such reactions have profound validity and, if ignored, are usually proven right down the road if decisions are revisited.  The lesson learned is to pay attention to the guts of those most predisposed to love/support/be enthusiastic about an offering ....

Every person in a company is an adult who shops/makes choices, was a kid/teen/student, may be/have been a parent, has been an employee, a leader, a follower.  This is internal gold, and is a marketer's first-line market research iterative feedback loop resource.  Involving/requiring this feedback from the very first stages of product/service design can make all the difference in time-to-market and market acceptance.

At these moments a marketer is engaging in the human behavior of investigation, of mining the human psyche and condition, as an archeologist of information, qualitative and quantitative.

(c) 2010 Lisa C. Clark
All Rights Reserved.