There is no such thing as a marketing expert

Because customers’ tastes and requirements are always changing, you’re always learning. In this VLOG, Grant Leboff explains that to understand this further, we need to understand what marketing is.

There’s no such thing as a marketing expert.

No really – there is no such thing as a marketing expert.

Because customers’ tastes and requirements are always changing, you’re always learning.

To understand this further, we need to understand what marketing is. ‘Marketing is the process of determining, communicating and delivering value, in order to obtain and retain a customer,’ and that is the key. It’s about obtaining and retaining customers.

In order to achieve this, we need to make customers the centre of our world. In marketing, it’s known as customer orientation. No matter what your product or service is, you need to understand your customer innately. What are their challenges? What are their issues? What are their desires? In what context do these take place? What are their requirements and what are their motivations? Without this understanding, it’s impossible to market effectively.

You see, what a lot of businesses do, is they think about the benefits they offer, what they do, the advantages for the customer, and then they go out and tell them.

The real way to do it is to start with the customer in mind. Think about their challenges and their issues and then work back to yourself. In that way, you will be truly customer centric.

In order to truly understand your customers, there’s quantitative and qualitative research. There’s your own data that you have, there’s behavioral data in the marketplace, what’s going on, trends, but the key is to also go and talk to prospects and customers. Too many marketers are not having enough conversations with the people with whom they are trying to communicate. In order to have a real understanding, you need to get out there and speak to them.

Because we live in a fast paced world where markets and customer requirements and contexts are forever changing, there are no marketing experts – We’re always learning.

So welcome to the world of marketing where there are no experts, but if you’re lucky, you might come across some very good students.

There may be small changes to the spoken word in this transcript in order to facilitate the readability of the written English