What do you think?

A few years ago, I read the book “Start with Why” by Simon Sinek,
one of the best thought leaders I know. I tried to apply his book in my everyday professional work. But then, in marketing, there is an amendment to that for us as marketers. For us marketers, the case is “Start with Why, and for Whom.”

Marketing is all about people. As marketers, everything we do on a daily basis should be thinking about people. These people could be our users, or they might never convert. But they could remember us forever.

Sometimes, we forget that our user is just a human like us. We are so deeply engaged with our overwhelming massive number of marketing channels, platforms, and AI tools that we tend to forget about the user. Who, in fact, should be the center of all we do.

How often did you click on an ad and land on a 404 page? How many times have you seen a fabulous video ad, but the promoted service differed from the ad you saw? Do you think those marketers ever went through the user’s journey before publishing their ads?

How can we become a better marketer? Is marketing all about learning to work with as many marketing channels and tools as possible? What happens to the users then?

Looking at the top marketing leaders, I realized that the more you put the customer in the center (and I mean it), the more you get out of your marketing activities. We all know this (I hope), but when you get to the operational work, it’s very easy to forget about it.

Instead of running a tremendous number of meaningless ads, sometimes we need to think and start with “Why” and “Who.”

Until AI can undertake full emotional feeling recognition (if ever), it’s on us as marketers to tailor our ads toward people’s emotions, feelings, and values. Emotional intelligence, communication, and adaptability could help us craft valuable human-centric ads for society. An ad that brings value, not only clicks. And the ad that users want to see, not forced to see.