Self-Discovery is the Key to Good Marketing Strategy October 08, 2009, by Peter Mirus in Marketing
The basis of my marketing approach is knowledge gained through self-discovery. The path of vision to self-discovery is directly through the eyes of your market.
Imagine yourself standing on a grassy slope with a wide open plain in front of you. Filling the plain is your market—not a crowd of people, but a group of individual persons. These individual persons extend across the plain and into the foothills of a mountain range on the other side. These individuals are flowing down streams that come down from the mountains, through the foothills, across the slope, and out onto the valley floor.
The place on which you stand is not high enough to see each individual person. In fact, you can only see a half-dozen rows deep. You want to see more. The mountain range on the other side of the plain is undoubtedly a better vantage point, but you worry that if you ascend so high, you won't be able to see the individuals any more—just a massive pool of humanity. But you move into the plain, you might be able to see even less than you see right now.
So, how do you engage the entire market?
Easily. You stop being concerned about who you can see, and how clearly you can see them. Instead, you close your eyes and imagine yourself in the shoes of each person standing on the plain...and you ask yourself: "What do I see when I look up at that slope?"
It isn't literally possible to put your feet into every pair of shoes. So instead, you deploy your forces. You send messengers out onto the plain, who gather information and convey it to monitors that you have stationed on the mountain ridges. You delve into the ranges, you find the source of the mountain streams, and follow them back to the plain. You understand where each person came from and how they got to this place.
You ask questions, and organize persons into groups of people. The questions are many, but the ultimately what you are trying to get from each person, and from each group, is the answer to the master questions: Who are you? What are you looking for? What do you see?
In business, the only way to see yourself truly—as you really are (not as you want to see yourself, or as it is convenient to see yourself)—is to understand how your market sees you (or whether they can see you). The way you know yourself only on the inside is, to a great extent irrelevant if each individual person (customer, client, partner) does not see you in the same way...and find something of value in that vision.
Ironically, if the person sees value in your company, it will be as they see themselves through the prism of the goods and services that you provide.
You need to see and know yourself through the eyes of others. It is the only way to make sure that you are valued, that you are wanted, that you are needed. It is the only way to comprehensively engage the market.
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