Tactic matters: focus your marketing on client needs

With product design, it makes no sense to create a key and then try and find a lock that fits it. Your marketing and product offering is not a war, or even a contest. It is about the generous act of helping a person solve a problem – their problem, not yours. In this article, the author will discuss the need to focus on specific groups of people and to really understand their underlying problems.

A few years ago, author Seth Godin went with a VisionSpring team to a small town in India to understand the challenge it faces as a healthcare organisation. VisionSpring is a social enterprise that offers reading glasses to the billion people around the world who need them, but do not have them. As lifespans have increased, many people over the age of 50 who are otherwise healthy need reading glasses, but are unable to work because they cannot read or do close-up work. VisionSpring's strategy is to produce low-cost glasses in bulk, then sell them in villages around the world for around $3 USD each.