It seems simple: Marketing is about satisfying the needs of your customers. But how do you define needs? Abraham Maslow’s famous hierarchy of needs remains an ever-useful tool for analyzing your customers’ needs. In the pyramid, lower-tier needs must be satisfied before higher-order ones can. The secret for marketers is to
- Determine how your product or service satisfies needs on each rung of the pyramid; and
- Focus your efforts on the top of the pyramid.
According to Maslow, self-actualization is “the desire for self-fulfillment, namely the tendency for [the individual] to become actualized in what he is potentially, (…) the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.” The motivation is growth, not filling a deficiency. The goal is fulfilling one’s existing potential, not creating a new need.
The need for self-actualization springs from our identity, how we perceive and understand our individual self, who we are. Who we can and aspire to be is central to our identity. It’s more emotional than rational.
It’s necessary for marketers to define how your product or service satisfies each needs category. True differentiation and positioning happens at the top. In crowded markets, everything is a commodity. No matter what the product or service, identity marketing helps create an emotional connection with the customer. Engage people on the emotional, identity level, and you’ll satisfy their highest-order needs. What more can you aspire to?
How do companies in these examples satisfy the self-actualization need?
- Bread: Dave’s Killer Bread
- Diapers: gDiapers
- Groceries: New Seasons Market and People’s Food Coop
- Loans: ShoreBank Pacific and Rose City Mortgage
Credits: Abraham Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation”, Psychological Review #50 (1943), 370-396.
