Have you ever been to a meeting where someone started speaking for you?
How did you feel then? Uncomfortable? Managed? Losing agency?
Well, besides the emotional tug of war consider this - what if the other person said what was incorrect or non-cohesive in your stead?
It sure sounds like a nightmare.
Now imagine a similar situation where the managed person is your customer.
In the meeting where you want to understand your customers better, someone else starts speaking up in their stead.
And you soon discover that that person is none other than yourself.
Well, you get the drift. Right?
So today we will deep dive into the concept of Points of View or POVs and how essential they are for marketing as you know it.
Predicting customer behavior
How your customers behave is very difficult to ascertain. How your customers or audience will react to a piece of content is, again, difficult to gauge.
And so a lot of personal bias and misconceptions start driving in. Very often folks make cloudy judgments about customer behavior.
The most common one is equating it with one's own point of view. However, how 'you' would behave to a copy or a process might not be how your customer might. Or going one step ahead, even amongst customers there will be plenty of diversity of preferences and reactions to various marketing campaigns.
And this is where the concept of POV comes into play.
The concept of Point of View in marketing
We all know what a point of view is. It is exactly the same thing in marketing as well. The important thing here is that POVs differ widely from person to person on a given topic and as a result, their reactions would as well.
Thus, one of the most critical things in marketing are POVs. Especially, because a marketer's POV may not be equal to a customer's POV.
In fact, sometimes, the intense knowledge and the confidence a product marketer has around a product creates blind spots.
The most common symptom of this- is someone imposing their own traits, beliefs, and behaviors on their customers.
Reading preferences, content consumption, and psychological behaviors are all mapped out as if the customer is in a mirror.
But the fact remains – you are not your customer.
Your customer might work in an e-commerce company in a European city, may love Moby Dick, like subtle humor, consume long content during subway rides, and hate technical and ops work.
While you might work for a non-e-commerce company, operating from a suburb in India, enjoying Tinkle comics, not caring about humor, believing no one reads in this age and can build macros in MS Excel.
The POVs and the outlook might vary. Quite a lot. Quite soon.
The best way to tackle such subtleties and gross errors of judgment is to try to 'understand' different POVs.
And that is where great marketing usually starts.
How to tackle POV biases?
So how do you play out of such bias and build great marketing campaigns-
Write your hypothesis down.
Write them down to understand their relevance, not to enforce them.
Avoid assuming. Assumptions when qualified by experience, common sense, or some data become hypotheses.
Avoid gross generalizations. No, the email is not dead. No, Sans serif is not the font for all. And no, everybody doesn’t like single-column blogs.
Talk to your customers
Go to your customers with open minds.
Don’t put words of your hypothesis in their mouths. Let them tell you their POV.
Look at the historical data of what worked out in the past and use that to guide you.
Understanding the customer's POV will help you position your brand with better control. In fact, once you understand this you will know the knowledge, experience, and process gaps that you can fill. This could your own recipe to become a thought leader.
Using POVs to become a thought leader
Most of the time thought leadership is knowing where the gaps in the knowledge, skill, or processes of your audiences are. And understanding their POV goes a long way toward this.
This brings with it the idea of going against the trend or generally accepted ideas and concepts.
Many times marketers are instructed to -"Say what they want to hear."
Well, DON'T.
Such generic advice could be seen floating all over marketing blogs and socials. The idea promoted here is to write, say or post whatever is in currency with the customer and not swim against the current.
Well, there is a BIG downside to this!
If you say only what they want to hear, you won't be able to create a thought-leading brand. You are here to show your customers a new or better way of doing things. And you can't do that without saying things that they don't want to hear or are unknown at that point.
Stagnant thoughts or ideas can never be a differentiator. It's experiments that build brands.
Meet your customers where they are, not where you are.
If you are behind, don’t drag them back. But if you are ahead, pull them up.
That’s all, folks
I hope this newsletter edition helps you in understanding customer POVs and building amazing marketing campaigns.
If you have thoughts on this or any ideas to share, let me know in the comments.
Regards, Yours Market-editor