Marketing 4Me

A cou­ple weeks back I wrote a blog post about some­thing I called the Me3 model for mar­ket­ing.  This model was built around the idea that mar­ket­ing involves 3 broad area of con­cern — mes­sage, medium, and mea­sure­ment. In the time since, I have found it to be a very use­ful way to approach mar­ket­ing, par­tic­u­larly as it per­tains to help­ing me deter­mine where clients need my help.  Still, as I was prepar­ing to present it to some stu­dents at the Uni­ver­sity of Day­ton last week, it occurred to me that some­thing was miss­ing from the model.  Although this cycli­cal model made sense, it was lack­ing an impor­tant dimen­sion — meaning.

Mean­ing is crit­i­cal.  Bob Gilbreath dis­cusses its impor­tance in his amaz­ing book The Next Evo­lu­tion of Mar­ket­ing, Con­nect with Your Cus­tomers by Mar­ket­ing with Mean­ing. The more mean­ing­ful your com­pany, prod­ucts, or ser­vices are to peo­ple, the greater your chances for sus­tain­able suc­cess.  Mean­ing mat­ters.  Think of it this way.  Most peo­ple have never heard of your com­pany.  To them your brand means noth­ing.  Some have heard of you, but never used your ser­vices.  Oth­ers are one time cus­tomers.  Still fewer peo­ple are loyal cus­tomers who con­tinue to buy from you, and an even smaller, but very impor­tant group is the peo­ple who can be described as your brand evan­ge­lists.  These are your most loyal, most vocal, and prob­a­bly most prof­itable cus­tomers.  Ide­ally, brands should be seek­ing to increase their level of mean­ing in the mar­ket — con­stantly seek­ing new ways to con­nect with their cus­tomers and strengthen their level of engagement.

So today I am updat­ing and renam­ing me3 the Mar­ket­ing 4Me model.  The 4^th  “Me” is ulti­mately the peo­ple whom the mar­ket­ing is built around.  Mean­ing is about the dynamic wants, needs, and per­cep­tions of peo­ple.  It is sym­bol­ized by a pyra­mid that sits atop the venn dia­gram of Mes­sage, Medium, and Mea­sure­ment.  In essence it takes the cycli­cal nature of the orig­i­nal model and seeks to add an upward spi­ral to it.  Mean­ing mea­sures what, if any­thing, a brand, prod­uct, or ser­vice means to peo­ple.   The pyra­mid was cho­sen because of the applic­a­bil­ity of Maslow’s hier­ar­chy of human needs to the con­cept of mean­ing.  Under­stand­ing the basic human need you fill for some­one pro­vides insight into what your brand means and where to go next.

I antic­i­pate mak­ing fur­ther revi­sions as time passes, but for now this is a start and it works 4 me.  Does this work 4 you?  Do you find this meaningful?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Maslow’s_Hierarchy_of_Needs.svg