Deep consumer understanding is big thing in marketing – experts

Marketing has swiftly moved away from mundane pattern to sophistication due to dynamic society informed by technology. Consequently, constant information about the changing consumer is the next big thing in marketing.

This was the view of the three speakers on the ‘Marketing imperatives for the emerging Nigerian market space’ lecture organised last week by Lagos Business School Alumni Association and sponsored by Proximity Communications Nigeria.

The speakers with deep understanding of marketing approached the topic from different perspectives, but unanimously established that marketers who need to grow their companies’ bottom-line must understand the consumer through research and analysis of data available.

Lack of understanding of consumer needs in certain cases has led to trial and error of marketing strategies and closure of companies.

In his submission, Chima Nwuke, head of marketing, West Africa – consumer banking at Standard Chartered Bank, who is an apostle of market segmentation, said marketers must have a clear understanding of their target segments, saying “you need to put your consumers in different baskets and every basket should be a homogenous entity. And how you reach and preach to them depends on their lifestyle and media habit.”

In addition to consumer understanding, he said the 2014 marketing manager must be somebody who had clear understanding of the entire value chain, noting that “at any point the marketer must know whether the problem is distribution or advertisement. As a marketer you also need to track projects because if it is messed up on the way, then there is a problem.”

He advised marketers to unlearn so that they can start to learn the new things.

Also tackling the topic, Reuben Onwubiko, the marketing director for Africa at GlaxoSmithKline Consumer Healthcare, who believes in the use of metrics in marketing to measure impact, said marketers need to develop the right insight from the data that exist today and also recognise the coming trends through digitalisation of the world.

Onwubiko also emphasised the need for marketers to understand consumers’ media consumption habit to reach the target audience effectively, saying “for appropriate marketing to the right audience, marketers need to involve more of research to understand their consumers better. They need to engage in research and interpret the data generated.”

Oare Ojeikere, group marketing officer in Dangote Group of Companies, who was worried that marketers were not changing in line with the times, focused on youth as important marketing segment. He said marketers need to understand the consumer of tomorrow, explaining that the audience had changed and marketers need to change, saying marketers who don’t understand the youth market don’t have chance in the Nigerian market space because the next generation was youth.

Also speaking, the CEO of Proximity Communications Nigeria, Rotimi Olaniyan, the sponsor of the annual lecture, said lecture was a great opportunity to bring the marketing managers together to share ideas and impact knowledge on the next generation of marketing leaders.

The lecture started last year as part of Proximity Communications’ fifth year anniversary.

Daniel Obi