By Joey Ricard - October 7, 2022
A strong focus on customer needs, a progressive approach, and a desire to embrace innovations are the key aspects of successful marketing these days!
Miss out on any of these, and your business will start suffering from marketing myopia, resulting in stunted growth and even bankruptcy!
In digital marketing, marketers often come across the expression MARKETING MYOPIA. While we all know ‘Myopia’, as a vision condition, not all of us are familiar with marketing myopia.
Wondering what is marketing myopia and how can it be avoided? Or, how can it even impact your business?
Then we are here with our latest article that contains all the answers you seek! Let’s jump in!
Marketing myopia is a phenomenon that impacts both the internal and external growth of businesses. The marketing myopia concept was developed by Theodore Levitt, who also coined the term in 1960. According to him, it refers to a lack of insight into what businesses do for their customers.
Though organizations adopt this inward approach to meet their immediate requirements, it misleads them to prioritize their short-term goals over customer satisfaction and make poorly suited decisions for their customers. Apart from that, this marketing approach also fails to observe the recent trends in the market.
Some marketing myopia examples include Kodak losing most of its shares to Sony cameras as the former ignored the potential of digital cameras and the advancement of photographic technologies. Then there is Nokia, one of the biggest marketing myopia examples that lost its market shares to iOS and Android as it failed to adopt the latest technologies, suffered from slow-decision making, and the inability to reposition itself.
From value-driven customers to brand-driven customers, product-driven customers, and purpose-driven customers, consumers can be divided into different groups according to what influences their purchasing decisions. Plus, the needs of customers today are changing.
For example, fulfilling basic and short-term needs no longer satisfies their expectations. Customers now care about their relationship with the brands they purchase from and their shopping experience.
But unfortunately, marketers or brands suffering from marketing myopia completely ignore these changes in their consumers and stick to a narrower view that distorts their strategic vision.
To them, consumers are just consumers and nothing more than that, which leads them to focus only on selling. They ignore analyzing whether the consumers want what they have to offer or not. But to be a successful business or brand, one needs to fulfil the consumers’ functional needs and address their concerns.
Plus, if your business fails to follow the latest marketplace trends, you might get replaced by your rivals very soon! But then again, considering only one marketing approach would not make you sustainable in this competitive era! You need to be more creative while developing your products and services and pay attention to all the Marketing Ps.
Most companies feel that following traditional marketing approaches can help them meet customer expectations. But alas! It isn’t true! The global marketplace is changing, and businesses must adapt to the changes to be successful!
Marketing myopia is like a bug in a code. It slowly corrupts your strategies, lowers customer engagement, and eventually fails your business. But it does not happen overnight!
Various causes can be responsible for businesses suffering from marketing myopia, such as:
A short-sighted and inward-looking marketing approach in which brands focus on short-term needs instead of the customer’s point of view.
Yes, marketing myopia may be dangerous and catastrophic for businesses regardless of their type or size. But there is a cure for this, too, only if you are searching for it!
Yes! Here are some tips for those wondering how to avoid marketing myopia! These tips will help you cure marketing myopia and craft a customer-centric approach that can serve you for both a short and long period.
Do you know who your customers are? Well, you can’t build a business if you don’t know who your customers are! So, first things first, know your buyer personas, i.e., a fictional representation of your target audience or your ideal customers.
Are your customers likely to shop online? Are they tech-savvy? What are their needs? The more you know and understand your customers, the better you will be able to see things the way your target audience does and shape your marketing strategies accordingly.
If you are a B2B business, consider knowing firmographics like company size, job title, industry, etc.
No matter what you do, do it around your customers. Yes, whatever action you take as a business marketing professional, make sure your actions revolve around their needs, wants, and expectations.
Blackberry going out of business is one example of marketing myopia where it failed to understand and fulfill what customers wanted.
So, focus on the problems and frustrations your customers are facing. Take feedback from your customers and work hard to rectify things your customers find not satisfying. For example, follow up with an enhanced version of your products/services.
Remember, customers, come first!
Don’t just focus on your short-term goals! Have a big-picture business strategy, too!
Having a clear and realistic plan for long-term objectives can help your business create more efficient strategies. Combining your long-term and short-term goals is what it takes for an organization to flourish.
For example, while setting short-term product targets, set your long-term customer goals, too, such as gaining 10,000 new customers in the coming year. Establishing long-term objectives, such as acquiring new customers, helps you secure new revenue generation for a long time.
Not just in life, but in business too, competition is a fact! Especially when you want to grab the attention of selective customers in a continuously shrunken market! Hence, always keep an eye on your competitors and what they are up to.
List the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors and position your business against those to measure your competitive effectiveness. It will help you understand where to improve to attract customers to your business over your competitors and cure marketing myopia!
Even tools like Kompyte and SEMrush can come in handy for gathering data about your competitors and acquiring the necessary information about their marketing strategies!
Another tip for how to avoid marketing myopia and a key aspect of ensuring long-term success is embracing the latest trends, innovations, and technologies and creating new strategies.
In our digital age, the world is changing pretty fast. What works for your customers today may not work tomorrow. So, you must keep up with the major changes in your industry and the world.
If you remember, in the early 2000s, Blockbuster was the king of the DVD rental industry. But marketing myopia led to its downfall and bankruptcy in 2009 as it continued focusing on its existing business model and refused to embrace streaming services like Netflix, which were becoming popular.
So you see only those businesses that adapt to the latest changes and innovations succeed. Those who continue with a myopic focus are bound to struggle and fail!
In search of achieving success and fulfilling business goals, organizations often end up developing marketing myopia that threatens the very existence of their business!
Yes, marketing myopia is no joke! Once your business develops this condition, the consequences can be catastrophic!
So why not take the necessary measures to avoid it altogether, especially now that you know that brands and mainly marketers are said to suffer from marketing myopia? While the tips we mentioned above can help you prevent it, getting the assistance of professional digital marketers can ensure complete protection from marketing myopia.
So, if you don’t want your business to become the next victim of marketing myopia, connect with us today! Our dedicated and expert digital marketing team can help you craft customer-oriented future-proof marketing strategies which can take your business to new heights!
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Joey Ricard
Klizo Solutions was founded by Joseph Ricard, a serial entrepreneur from America who has spent over ten years working in India, developing innovative tech solutions, building good teams, and admirable processes. And today, he has a team of over 50 super-talented people with him and various high-level technologies developed in multiple frameworks to his credit.
