How to Win Your Consumers' Hearts

The big question every brand needs to ask themselves is – why do I matter to my consumer? Do I even matter to my consumer at all? When you know why you matter to them, you can position your brand better. A good brand fulfils both the needs of their consumers and the purpose beyond the immediate need. The purpose is usually the part that many brands miss out on.

For instance, I worked for Vanish, a stain remover brand. While the immediate need was to remove a stain, the purpose behind why people used it was that they didn’t want to appear clumsy or be embarrassed. They wanted to look good and put together. So, when we connected that purpose to the product, we were able to connect with our customers on a deeper level emotionally.

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Consumer insights isn’t just about finding out what users want but also about understanding the deep human truths and the purpose behind why they want something. Once we know that, we can then communicate it to them.

In consumer insights, you would work mostly with the marketing and public relations teams. In many cases, the insights team reports to the marketing team, but more recently the insights team is starting to become an independent function. This is because of the temptation for internal marketing teams to use research that they want to hear rather than research that represents the truth, which makes it hard to achieve independent and truthful results. With insights as a separate function, marketing can’t just challenge or ignore the findings as easily.

The consumer insights team should be sitting in for the marketing and public relations meetings to understand their strategy. They will tell you they need X, and then you need to ask them to look into Y. You need to have a say on what that decision will be and help to craft a better retail strategy by showing them how to better connect with the consumers. The insights team used to be like a librarian, then it became a judge on whether the company hit their targets or not, and now it’s taking on more and more of a consulting role that helps senior management in decision making.

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So how can you begin the process of uncovering the deep human truths and emotions of your consumers?

Map out the User Journey

You need to get to know your users and consumers, understand how they use the product, know what they use together with the product, and the entire experience they have with it.

The easiest way to know your customers is to start with the ones who are buying from you. Do a survey with them and find out more about them. These days, there is a plethora of data available as well as different ways to reach out. If you do an online campaign, you can see what products customers have seen before your ad, and know what are the key interests of the people who click on your advertisements and come to your stores.