The most Underrated Marketing Tool.

It might not be what you thought of. It’s something we all have deep down inside, often collecting dust as we assume it’s baggage in marketing.

It’s empathy.

The best things are simple. Creating great marketing strategies boil down to this one thing — empathy.

Your ability to put yourself in your customer's shoe, and feel their needs and understand their world view will define your effectiveness as a marketer.

Empathy is underrated because marketers are trying to sell products and services day in and day out. All they care about is the numbers they need/want to hit. Here is the bummer — People don’t care about you or your problems. They care about themselves and their problems.

If you can get yourselves to care enough about them and their problems, you will have their attention. Moreover, you will have solutions to your problems — those numbers you need to hit.

Marketing is as simple as that, solving problems for others.

When you Google the definition of marketing you get

“Marketing refers to activities a company undertakes to promote the buying or selling of a product, service, or good.”

Which is the same definition being fed to tens of thousands of students of marketing every year. It’s all about the company. True marketing is in fact all about the customers.

The definition of marketing I love is this:

‘Sharing a solution with someone to a problem they face’

good marketing is doing that in a convincing manner.

This definition takes focus away from us and puts it on the customer. Right, where it belongs. That is where all the magic happen.

True marketing solves problems, not just customer’s problem but company’s too. How? The more people you solve the problem for and the faster you do it, the greater the business grows.

In fact, the only sustainable and long-term way to solve your problems is to solve others’ problems.

The more you focus on yourself, the greater the problem. The more you try to stay afloat the faster you sink.

Start thinking about what your customer wants, their problems, their world-view and communicate your solution.

If your solution does in fact solve the problem, they will return the favour solve yours as well and as a bonus, we’ll have a better world with fewer problems.