“We don’t actually know what our customers think or want.”
This surprisingly candid statement encapsulates the viewpoint of many respected marketing experts. They stress that the starting point for any successful marketing strategy is to check our ego and recognise a simple truth: as marketers, we are not the consumer.
No matter how experienced we are or how much we think we understand our market, we lack the intuitive, insider perspective of actual customers. Our priorities, thought processes and needs are different than theirs.
So if we want to create products, services and messaging that truly resonates, we need to develop an authentic outside-in view. We have to commit to understanding what makes our audience tick and what they expect from us.
This customer-centric approach is known as achieving market orientation. An important principle for both individuals and organisations, market orientation is an culture and mindset that puts target audience needs at the centre of all decisions and activities.
Signs of Success
When people talk about vague notions like “customer focus”, they can mean a wide spectrum of things. From friendly service to lavish experiences. Market orientation is much more specific.
Truly market-oriented businesses build their entire strategy around their audience. Customer needs directly inform their offerings, operations and culture. These companies don’t arrogantly declare “we know what’s best”. They ask “what do our customers need from us?”
And they back this curiosity with evidence and insights.
Academic studies consistently show organisations with authentic market orientation reap rewards, including:
Higher profitability
Faster sales and revenue growth
Improved customer retention
More successful innovation and new products
Barriers to Overcome
Achieving market orientation, however, is often easier said than done. Our own assumptions, fears and constraints get in the way.
Common “enemies” that sabotage success include:
The Pressure of Time
Understanding customers takes effort our overcrowded schedules can’t accommodate. It’s tempting to fast track research and analysis to hit deadlines. But sacrificing rigor leads to problems down the road when products and messaging miss their mark.
Budget Limitations
Many departments deprioritise investing in customer insights due to tight finances. But these studies often pay for themselves many times over when they lead to offerings that closely match audience expectations.
Fear of Negative Findings
It’s never fun discovering customer dissatisfaction with our brand. So it’s tempting to avoid confronting hard truths. But issues can only be addressed if they see the light of day through clear-eyed research.
Reliance on Outdated Assumptions
When operating models worked well in the past, it’s appealing to stick with them. But customer expectations evolve. Regular check-ins via surveys, interviews and more can expose flawed assumptions before they lead us astray.
The Power of Humility
Overcoming these barriers comes down to one key principle – practicing humility.
Great marketers carry healthy paranoia. They find ego to be dangerous. While extensive experience leads to helpful intuition, they know they still don’t have all the answers.
Humility enables curiosity. By having the vulnerable courage to admit we don’t fully grasp our audience’s ever-shifting needs, we stay thirsty to understand more. We lean into perpetual learning.
Arrogance, on the other hand, assumes we already comprehend exactly what customers want. When we’re overconfident in our expertise, we start making huge bets based on flawed hunches instead of evidence.
Before we know it, we’re completely off track.
While humility may seem counterintuitive for business success, it lays the foundation for tuning into subtle signals from the market. And responding appropriately.
Steps Towards Market Orientation
Becoming more market oriented starts with principles and mindsets. But concrete activities are essential for translating attitudes into action and outcomes.
Useful steps include:
- Schedule Time for Immersive Research
Rather than treating customer understanding as an afterthought or a “nice to have”, prioritise insights work in schedules and budgets.
Identify key questions that need answering to enhance offerings. Then get scrappy using cost effective small scale solutions like online surveys, video interviews, user tests and focus groups to shed light.
- Broaden Your Circle of Advisors
Leaders often limit input to internal personnel or industry colleagues with similar views.
Get outside opinions by recruiting a Customer Advisory Board (CAB). Include a diverse mix of real-world users across demographics and psychographics. Use this sounding board to expose you to alternate angles.
- Empower Frontline Teams
Client facing personnel like customer service have daily exposure to user sentiment. Yet their feedback often fails to shape higher level choices.
Survey these teams regularly, encourage them to share stories/problems and integrate their insights into strategy discussions.
The Long Game
Humility and learning enable market orientation on an individual level. But creating enduring Alignment across an entire organisation is a longer march still rife with hurdles.
Leaders must continually reinforce that the customer sits at the core of all activity – from product development to operations, culture and incentives.
This clarity helps marketing avoid getting drowned out by factions with differing priorities like Engineers obsessed with technical excellence or Finance focused on shareholder returns.
Studies suggest the deeper market orientation runs in a company ethos, the greater the performance over long horizons. Customer-centricity fuels innovation and growth that create a self-reinforcing cycle.
While instilling market orientation demands vision, investment and patience, the ultimate rewards for organisations can be game changing.
Of Two Minds
Enhancing personal and organisational market alignment calls on us to hold two conflicting ideas simultaneously.
The first is confidence. Assurance that placing the consumer at the centre enables teams to deliver compelling offerings that beat competitors. Self-efficacy to evangelise this belief across stakeholders.
But the second is doubt. Continually questioning our own grasp of user truths. Challenging assumptions and conventional wisdom as audience dynamics change. Unwavering commitment to learn more.
This paradox of confidence and doubt is captured in a quote from iconic designer Charles Eames: “Innovate as a last resort. More daring, more fun, more humility.”
The courage to stay humble. The conviction to advocate customer centricity. Balancing this twin mentalities is key for marketing mastery.
Time to Choose
So back to the initial assertion of marketing experts – “We don’t actually know what customers want.”
This statement represents a fork in the road. One path is comfortable but problematic. Choose to rely on intuition and assumptions instead of insights. Tell audiences what you think they need versus asking them what they actually need.
The second path requires humility to admit knowledge gaps, as well as committing time and budget to close them. It needs leaders willing to challenge status quos and silos to ensure customer alignment across all levels.
While the latter journey is hard, the destination delivers compounding returns over decades. Consistently fulfilling target audience needs seeds loyal brand enthusiasts and powers virtuous cycles of referrals, retention, growth and profitability.
Which way will you choose to go? The decision you make today impacts just how market oriented, responsive and ultimately successful your marketing proves to be tomorrow.