Marketers should forget about what the product does and focus on how it makes people feel By Roy Osing
We live in a product flogging world.
Products are pushed at us. Technology rains down on us through
mass communications.
What businesses supply (as opposed to what we want) is jammed
down our throats with the hope that we will bite-and-buy what they offer.
Today more than ever, however, purchase decisions are motivated
by what people want and desire, not need.
People buy on the basis of what they yearn for and ache for; to
achieve happiness in a world with pressure and stress on their lives.
Product
flogging is intrusive and completely out of sync with this reality,
and is a recipe to fail.
Happiness is driven by what we experience rather than what we
consume in material goods. Fond memories of a family vacation are long-lasting.
The new car is fun for a while but soon feels no different than just the one we
just traded in.
This is a game-changer for product floggers. Rather than push
features, technology and price, the challenge is to create broad-based appeals
to the full spectrum of feelings that an individual has.
The marketer's objective in this sense is to elicit a positive
emotional response from the customer, rather than satisfy a consumer need.
"When people were asked to recall their most significant material
purchase and their most significant experiential purchase over the past five
years, they reported the experiential purchase brought them more joy
and enduring satisfaction, and it was clearly 'money well spent' compared
with the material purchase," wrote Thomas Gilovich, Professor of
Psychology, Cornell University in Determinants of Happiness.
Furthermore, experiences
create more happiness than material goods because they are a
personal expression of what we desire. They belong to us alone and no one else.
Memo to marketers: forsake your flogging ways and start creating
personal experiences for your customers.
Keep Maya Angelou's words in mind: "... people will forget
what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never
forget how you made them feel."
The payback is long-term customer loyalty; the better they feel,
the longer they stay.
These 3 steps will get you started.
1. Establish the EXPERIENCE CREATOR POSITION in
marketing to augment in the standard product management role.
These are the experience packagers; the folks that integrate,
brand and price the value elements necessary to deliver the complete experience
that customers covet.
2. Include FEELINGS as a key element of
marketing research. What experience would make someone happy, special and
fulfilled? What does the person crave?
3. Measure the EMOTIONAL ELEMENT of your
experience packages; "How did it make you feel?" not just "Did
it meet your needs?"
The world is full of floggers.If you want to make a difference
and stand-out from the flogging herd, let experiences guide you.
About Author
Roy Osing (@royosing) is a former President and CMO with over 33 years of leadership experience covering all the major business functions including business strategy, marketing, sales, customer service and people development. He is a blogger, content marketer, educator, coach, adviser and the author of the book series Be Different or Be Dead
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