In a survey of 10,000 senior leaders, 97% of them said that strategy was the leadership behavior most important to their organization's success. And yet, in another study, a whole 96% of the leaders surveyed said they lacked the time for strategy.
Ironically similar, the most fundamental questions in marketing are the most overlooked ones. Businesses often jump with both feet into execution with little to no time for the very basic strategic thinking.
Traditional marketing isn't working as it used to, and purposeful businesses must embrace a new mindset that starts with understanding that marketing is the act of going into the market with the intention of making change happen. We change non-customers into customers. We help our customers to be the person they seek to be. We help create an environment that the customers want to see created. We turn people from this to that.
It's a humans instinct, when making any sort of change, to have three ideas in mind, "What am I changing?", "Who is going to be changed?", "What is the result?" In Modern Marketing, the same Trifecta form the very first building blocks over which everything else is articulated:
- What's it for?
- Who's it for?
- What's the Promise?
Let's delve into this concept and how it can shape your marketing.
What's It For?
You can’t embark on any marketing effort without clarifying the change you seek to make. Professor David Collis of Harvard Business School once said: "It's a dirty little secret: Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If they can't, neither can anyone else."
"What's it for?" is your business's true north. It's where you are headed. It's the core of your solution. It's what you will be spending all your time and money to achieve.
When thinking of "What's it for?" it's crucial to go beyond the surface-level features of a product and instead focus on the underlying value for which people would want to buy it. In his book "Who Do You Want Your Customers to Become", Michael Schrage gives a brilliant example of Harley Davidson’s change: changing disrespected outsiders into beloved insiders.
Who's It For?
Your budget is limited, and so are your time and all your resources. You can't change everyone. I don't know about you, but I close almost all the ads that come my way. Those advertisers have lost all the money they spent to appear to me.
It'd be much more effective if they identified a specific group they want to start with and then focused all their resources on anticipating their needs, refining their messaging to them, and earning their trust so that they would choose to watch their ads and, more importantly, buy their thing.
"Who's it for?" prompts you to specify your ideal customer. Traditionally, it was about Demographics, i.e., what people look like on the outside, how old they are, what they do for a living, how much they earn, etc. But, it has changed to something more elegant and effective. Modern marketing is about psychographics: what the people we seek to change believe, what they want, what they are frustrated or anxious about, etc.
What's the Promise?
The third component of the Trifecta is a promise: a promise that you'll deliver something desirable. A promise about what customers who don't know you should expect when working with you. It's what makes them consider picking your product.
It turns out that promises that last and create great brands are the ones that get to the heart and viscerally touch the people you seek to change, which loops back to "Who's it for?" Here's more about how a clear and compelling promise can be as important as 50% of your brand.
Conclusion:
In Modern Marketing, the basic Trifecta—what's it for, who's it for, and what's the Promise—forms the foundation of the strategy for building a remarkable brand. Because Modern marketing is not just about promotion, it's about making meaningful connections and delivering remarkable value that people choose to pay extra for and to tell their friends about.
Being super clear about this trifecta makes everything that follows serve you to do work that matters for people who care and build a brand that makes you proud.
Worth mentioning here: you'll always loop back to these 3 questions to amend and fine-tune them as you dig deeper into your marketing and learn more about your people.
