A brief description of marketing myopia
Levitt proposed that companies shouldn’t focus on selling products; they should focus on solving customer needs. That sounds obvious enough. But companies get this wrong all the time. Levitt’s classic example is of a company that sells drill bits. It’s tempting to suggest that company is in the business of drill bits. But people don’t want drill bits. They want holes. So as long as the company continues to sell drill bits it risks being disrupted by a company that sells a better way to make holes. In Ford’s case, the realisation is that they need to stop selling ‘cars’ and start solving their customers’ need – getting from A to B. That might mean selling fewer cars. But as long as they can rack up the miles in their industry’s sharing-economy future, they can continue to be relevant.Content marketing myopia
It’s clear to us that as content marketing matures, it has to become a performance-based discipline. That is, a discipline that embraces data and uses it to make decisions and prove content’s value. So here’s the question: what is the ‘customer need’ you’re supposed to be solving with content marketing? And as a corollary, what is therefore the key metric by which you should be measuring your program?- Is it the delivery of ‘marketing-qualified leads’? In which case, are we aiming for sheer volume and traffic?
- Is it straight up ‘revenue’? In which case, are we aiming for accounts that are likelier to spend a lot?
- Is it a little fluffier than that: ‘content brand-building’? In which case, are we aiming for return visits and engagement?
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