MARKETING: The Ultimate Skill Marketers Must Have to Master Marketing

You already know that Mastering Marketing is what I sell and what I love to do on this world. Marketing to me is very interesting, because in the end is just about knowing people and how they think. This is why I love deconstructing marketing messages and strategies. Because I want to learn how to deliver true IMPACT in any advertising. And yes, I do it very very well too.

But this short article is not about me or my company.

This article is about teaching you how your mind SHOULD be working to craft the best marketing message ever. If I teach you this, you can transform your marketing. Something like striking users in social media effectively or pushing leads from big marketing channels like Google and Bing becomes a much easier mission.

The goal? Make you learn how to get inside the customer’s head and view things as he views. And no, I’m not yet talking about the invasive mind control of Neuromarketing.

Well, then what I’m exactly talking about here? Simple. The question comes down to this:

Confused?

Then let me ask you a few things: Have you ever used Facebook WHILE watching Netflix? I bet the answer is yes. Have you ever checked your email on your mobile WHILE driving? Probably another yes. Have you used Snapchat while watching Youtube? Once again, probably yes.

But why I’m saying this?
Well, because that CONTEXT matters for delivering marketing messages.

If your brand is trying to reach a mobile phone of a certain user who is skimming your content, instead of reading it, and at the same time he’s watching Netflix on his SmartTV, then your actual competition is not the other marketing agencies but Netflix itself instead.

Makes sense?
Because what is the goal of Marketing?

Therefore, you’re losing The Game of “getting people’s attention”. If Netflix, CNN, Game Apps are getting more attention from your customers than you, then you must know how to fight THOSE GUYS. You must. Because they are your actual competition. Not the businesses that do the same that your company does.

For instance, let’s say you’re trying to reach Millennials in Snapchat. Now, if you know that some millennials send photos and videos but never the chatting feature because they prefer to continue the conversation on iMessaging, then you would never make any real efforts towards that marketing channel. Right? Because iMessaging is stealing all your user’s attention when it comes to chatting. Get it?

Besides, when Business Insider asked Millennials if they would pay for Snapchat, look at the very FUNNY and real responses they gave:

• “I’m a Millennial. I will pay for nothing. Just throw in more ads or something”
• “Absolutely not! I think that’s the beauty of a lot of ‘social’ apps for phones these days, because they’re free. Paying for a service to send videos/chats/pictures to people just sounds ridiculous“

Interesting, isn’t it?! If Millennials are your target audience and if they are thinking this way, then maybe your Ads need to be recreated to either sell even more benefits OR to provide millennials some free and engaging stuff. Because otherwise, you might be throwing lots of money away.

Context, my friend. If all Millennials habits and contexts point to a customer who doesn’t like to pay for certain stuff, then even if you create the most effective marketing message and put it on the right channel, you’ll still fail because they won’t convert.

Attention and Conversion. Both rely on user context.
But don’t worry, I’ll make it even more explicit now for you.

THE CORE QUESTIONS TO UNDERSTAND THE USER’s CONTEXT
Tony Robbins says “If you ask better questions you get better answers” and that fits very well in this topic. Marketing only demands from the marketer that he creates better questions in order to get specific responses that allow him to build a more powerful and targeted marketing strategy, to deliver a more tailored marketing message.

Is that simple. Because targeting the customer with a truly good tailored message, which will be dropped inside his habit routines and expectations, is what actually converts.

Finding that out is hard, but not impossible.

But I’m here to give you solutions. Let’s give them. There are core questions that if you know the answers to, will definitely reveal a few golden secrets about your ideal customer.

So here are the core questions you need to embrace to master your Marketing:

• What my customer does first when he wants to find my product/service? Assume you have a cooking class business. Then what would your ideal customer do if he wanted to find a place to learn how to cook? Would he try to find a Facebook Group about this first? Or maybe Youtube and type something like “cooking class [city]”? Maybe just go to Google and type something similar. Find out. Interview some people from your audience.
• Who am I ACTUALLY competing against for my customer’s attention? If your ideal customer is searching for your product or service on a smartphone then it’s highly likely that your actual competition is Whats App and Snapchat. Correct? So if you can blend yourself in one of those, you get to speak through a channel that already “looks natural” to your customer. It will be much easier to try to reach him through these marketing channels than with a blog post, because the blog post will be fighting for attention every time his friends call him on Whats app or send a snap. But this is not over. On the other hand, if your customer is older but still uses a smartphone, maybe he uses Youtube to watch the news and the browser to read a few articles. In THAT case, using Youtube and blog posts would suit best for you. Get the point?
• How my customer actually CONSUMES content? If you know that your ideal customer prefers to read 1,000-word articles instead of 10,000-word articles due to lack of spare time or some other personal reason, then it makes more sense to craft your content based on his preferences. Right? Use your head. After all, why would you steal his attention from Whats App or Youtube or another attention-grabbing channel, to end up losing it just because you’re putting out content that doesn’t fit his daily needs? You must understand the customer. You must understand his life. If he likes to consume small but smart stuff, give him that. If he likes long, and in-depth content like the one Elon Musk shared about A.I. on his Twitter, then serve him that.

That’s it. If you know these answers to all these questions then marketing becomes much easier to master. Getting attention nowadays is only for the best, because of the noisy world we live in today. You’re pretty much aware of it by now.

Therefore, always try to learn the user’s context. His habits, his preferences and his personal routine as much as you can. Do that, and you’ll starting mastering Marketing.

Take care.