Your Marketing Should Create Significance

In a previous blog, I discussed a definition of marketing.

In this blog, I’d like to discuss the meaning of “significance.”

Significance is “the quality of being worthy of attention; importance.”

The nice thing about definitions is that they are objective; they mean the same thing to everyone.

Similarly, many products and services are objectively valuable. We all need food, clothing, and shelter. Most of us need some kind of transportation. Most everyone needs a doctor or medicine at some point.

But we can also refine our marketing to meet the subjective qualities of a customer — their particular contexts, moods, and personalities: what does this person need or want? What do they want right now? What goals might they have? What values do they hold abstractly?

There are a few different ways to meet these more subjective qualities a customer might have.

Sometimes, a customer might already have a conscious, immediate desire: a hot day is a great time to sell water bottles or lemonade. People walking down that street are your obvious potential customers.

Other times, we can anticipate an upcoming desire: high school students and their parents are a good target audience for universities.

For a third option, we can refine desires from abstractions to particulars: many women want to feel beautiful or to express themselves. But maybe this make-up product can meet that abstract desire in a particular way.

For a fourth option, we can help to create significance. Maybe someone hadn’t considered the value of our product before, but we can persuade them with messaging. Maybe our make-up product doesn’t only offer a particular value of beauty, which other make-up products might offer as well, but we can also persuade the customer that our sustainable production methods are an additional value.

It’s helpful to think about how to communicate your product’s significance to your customer, in order to meet their needs in real-time, create curiosity or interest, or be in mind when they wish to connect or purchase later.