Marketing is about promoting products and services. First rule—you don’t try to serve everybody. You segment the available market, then target a segment, then position the product.
This is one of the most difficult steps in marketing. We want to sell to everybody but if we try that, we end up watering down our product messaging and it doesn’t appeal to anyone. Get focused on who your target is and then position it from there.
Segmentation and targeting can be approached like this: As much as we would love the whole world to be our customer, it ain’t gonna happen. Instead, look at the potential market, then the actual available market. Segment it and target the most valuable potential customers.
Laddering is a great way to map out your product, see how it connects with your target, and decide how to use that to create marketing materials.
Ask your biggest fans what they like (a particular feature), why they like it (product benefit), why that matters (personal benefit), and how that connects to a high-level personal value. The link between the product and personal benefit is where the magic happens.
Now you can position your marketing materials through the love group’s eyes, while targeting the swing group to gain new customers.
Let’s take our lemonade business and do some love group interviews. You should end up with a laddering “Hierarchical Value Map” like the one below. When you notice patterns of responses you can bold those lines and focus on the ones that are on the personal relevance bridge.
When working through new ideas and marketing them, make sure you can pass the litmus test above. The more of these dimensions you have, the sharper your angle. Also, a good way to find out if you have a good idea is to ask if people would buy it and for how much.
Brands are NOT logos, graphics, or slogans. Those are artifacts that can help with familiarity with your brand, but a brand is much deeper. What impression is left on your customers? What are your touchpoints with them?
We think people care about what we do, or how we do it. Actually, they don’t. People care about WHY we do what we do. That is who we are at our core—and that becomes our brand mantra, which acts as guardrails on all decisions we are considering. Ask: “Does this decision align with our core?” If not, don’t do it.
BRAND MANTRA
WHAT WE ARE AT OUR CORE