Marketing is all about solving your customer’s problems!

The social media channels have forced marketers to relinquish control over their brands. Now, customers are using their newly-acquired clout to shift the conversation of brands from selling to helping.  Consumers are tired of reading billboards and banner ads every single day with same communication message because they’re busy solving their own problems.

In my earlier post ‘How will Marketing change in 2016’, we spoke about how buyers of today have changed with their buying decision as their buying behaviour has seen a drastic change in pattern. Following the traditional marketing methods do not work anymore. Marketing team is facing a tough time. There was a time when a little amount of advertising spends and telesales was able to get a whole lot of business. But, this is not the case anymore.  The reality is that by the time the customer contacts a brand he has already completed 60% – 70% of his/her buying cycle.

So rather than pushing your product / service on the face of your customer, it is important to establish a human connect with them considering how can your brand help them solve their day to day problems.

Let me explain the above stated statement with a classic example of India’s first telecommunication service provider brand named ‘Telstra’. At its most fundamental level, the telco giant sells dirt-bound copper wire, aerial towers and access to satellite coverage – not the most enticing  offerings and quite the headache for a marketing & sales department with the responsibility of attracting interested customers and increase numbers.

With this Telstra’s Marketing team could have created a mind-numbingly communication strategy taking of the physical specifications of their product, instead they decided to connect with their customers lives and acted accordingly. It was not what type of copper wire did Telstra used, its customers were interested in, but it was the need to connect to the world around them, with their near and dear ones – End goal Telstra was the solution to their customer’s communication problems.

So to summarize, customers today don’t want to be pushed towards any buying decision, instead they want valuable, insightful content which can help them. Luckily for brands, you already have wealth of knowledge and expertise, know get connected to your customers, identify their problem and set out to help them.