Adopt Their Goals as Your Own

The first principle of marketing is very simple. You have something people want or would want, if they knew what it could do for them. In essence, your goals are married with those of your audience. Once that principle is established, the rest is working out the details.

Just because you have something others want, it doesn't mean they're willing to pay what you're offering to sell it for or where, when and in the way you're offering to sell it.

There's also the possibility that they just might not like you very much.

A negative image, once established, can be very expensive to overcome. Skepticism rarely goes down without a fight. If it did, it wouldn't be skepticism.

The challenge, then, is not just to adopt your audience's goals as your own (to meet them at their point of need), but to convince others that you also have their best interests at heart -- more than anyone else.

Apple Leads the Way
When Steve Jobs insisted on a 99¢ price point for songs on iTunes, he did it over the objections of many in the recording industry, who feared widespread pirating of copyrighted music.

Consider the marketplace at the time. Music was in fact being pirated regularly. Early adopters had been previously accustomed to downloading their music for free on file sharing sites like Napster (before they went legit). The recording industry estimated (possibly inflated) pirating costs to be in the billions of dollars per year, globally, and rather than respond to this by introducing a legitimate alternative, they sued some of the worst offenders.

To the public, Jobs must have appeared to be the knight in shining armor -- standing up to the evil musical dragon on behalf of the silhouetted dancing villagers.

What Apple Did
People wanted a way to download music whenever they wanted it. The music industry wanted a way to sell music in a way that minimized piracy.

Apple built an infrastructure that was capable of aligning the goals of both parties so that transactions could take place the way people wanted it to -- on demand.

As a result, Apple is the hero, but the recording industry is still the villain -- even though consumers are getting more of what they want than they had been.

Don't Be the Enemy
You should never be so married to your processes that circumstances can pit you against the goals of your consumers. This will cause them to hate you, and as I mentioned earlier, if it's possible to overcome such hatred, it's expensive. Just don't do it.

Your chances of success improve significantly if you first correctly identify what business you're in so you can more appropriately map your goals to that of your audience.

If you're an agency interested in tangible results for your client, doing your best work means making sure this question is answered to both your and your client's satisfaction. - Cam Beck

Related Posts
Part 1: Give Them Ads You Want Them To See
Part 2: Give Them Ads They've Asked To See   
Part 3: Build Relationships

Comments

[Jim Stroup]

Cam - this is a great post. I repeatedly deal with people who insist that their processes are paramount, or who say they are in the customers' best interests, whether or not the customers agree or appreciate that. So, they spend a lot of time either ignoring the issue and dealing with the problems that pop up around the edges of that effort, or arm-wrestling with customers trying to teach them their (the company's) procedures or to convince them why they should adapt to them.

So, the best line in the piece goes to: "You should never be so married to your processes that circumstances can pit you against the goals of your consumers."

Thanks for this great presentation of this problem.

[Cam Beck]

Thanks, Jim. And you know... the issue is also represented by the customer service agent who claims to not be able to fix the mess the company started because:

1. He doesn't have the authority.
2. It's not his job.
3. It's against company policy.

Of course, especially with minor issues this is a missed opportunity to be the hero -- all just to be loyal to a cobwebbed policy.

I actually believe in process quite a bit, but not to the point that they hamstring my ability to do the right thing.