Market Orientation
Today’s marketing challenge is fundamental. Are we asking the wrong questions?
When I asked AI systems, "What is the most common marketing question in the world?" they responded:
How do I reach my target audience effectively? - Grok
How do I increase sales? - ChatGPT
What is the ROI? - Claude
How to measure campaign success? - Perplexity
Notice the pattern? All short-term, inward-focused, and tactical. Nothing about the market, customers, or strategy.
You Are Not the Customer
Your greatest challenge as a marketer is humility.
You are biased. You see things differently from your target customer. Your expert opinions about the market are likely flawed and potentially very dangerous.
The discipline of marketing requires you to abandon your assumptions. Never assume you know the consumer. Your job is to diagnose the market to be genuinely customer-focused.
No Exceptions
All successful marketers start with market orientation.
You might think, "That doesn't apply to me." Research proves otherwise. Harvard Business Review and CB Insights show that problem definition and lack of market need are among the leading causes of startup failures.
The same applies to corporate failures like Nokia, Kodak, and Blockbuster. They didn't fail because they couldn't adapt to technology - they failed due to a lack of market orientation.
What Market Orientation Really Means
Market orientation isn't talking to customers - everyone does that. It's flipping your approach 180° to learn from customers.
Sarah Carter from Adam & Eve DDB puts it bluntly: "Marketers should have a Post-It note saying: Consumers don't give a shit. People’s indifference to brands and advertising should be the starting point."
Without exception, the most successful companies are customer-obsessed. Amazon's Jeff Bezos: "The most important single thing is to focus obsessively on the customer." In 27 years of shareholder letters, the word "customer" appears 1,200 times—more than "long-term," "innovation," and "growth" combined.
South African examples include Capitec, whose co-founder and Ex-CEO, Riaan Stassen, explained: "We asked customers what they needed and how we could give it differently."
Choose Wisely
Great marketing begins when you accept that you know nothing and your customer knows everything.
Your choice:
Tactical obsession: Deciding what you'll do to the market, chasing short-term sales at the expense of long-term growth.
Or:
Market orientation: Listening to customers, developing clear diagnoses, a robust strategy, and exceeding targets through customer-focused processes.
Start by conducting a thorough market diagnosis. Develop a robust strategy with quantifiable objectives.
It sounds simple, and it is – but it won’t be easy.
Your market-obsessed competitors are already ahead. Choose to fight back or face another year of disappointing results.
Until next time, Keep Growing.