If any of you spend any time reading or
watching what is going on in marketing you'll know there has been a lot of talk about
things like ‘buyer personas’ where you use analytics and other big data type
tools to understand the way your target buyers behave. All of it helps and
there is no doubt about that, but I would suggest that for start ups, spin outs
and small growing companies where the volume of data just isn’t available,
there is a more effective and sensible way to go about this. Speak to your
customers and your market regularly – have a cup of coffee, buy someone lunch,
but most of all ask and listen.
The core of any really clear picture of a
market and what it is that it wants can only ever really be based on direct discussion
with your target buyers and there are a couple of reasons for this:
·
If you have read the You Moron entry on disruptive selling you will already know that everyone buys
on an emotional level and you can only ever understand that by talking directly
to your market to understand what the emotions attached to a purchase are, at
least until someone develops an emotional data warehouse anyway.
·
Markets never actually buy what
they need. Instead they buy what they perceive they need and there is not a
data warehouse or internally generated buyer persona that includes the concept
of perception of need. Without understanding the perception thing you are
flying pretty much blind.
Every time we help a company get out into
the market and start engaging potential customers directly the difference it
makes to their understanding of the market is dramatic – kind of like turning
on the lights. They always find that it gives them the powerful and in our
experience essential information about emotion and perception that unlocks the
insight you need on what really drives market behavior.
Hope this helps and as always it would be
great to hear others views and ideas on this.
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