• KYCM provides a clear answer about the “WHY” of a customer’s purchase decision. 
• Understanding this motivation helps brands in targeting their marketing campaigns. 

The core of the “Know Your Customer’s Motivation” (KYCM) marketing strategy is understanding the ‘WHY’ behind your customer’s purchase decision. Its principles go beyond the features and benefits of the product and services and uncover the underlying desires, needs, and emotions that drive the target audience to choose.

If you sell a fitness tracker, you will highlight features like step counting, calorie tracking, heart rate monitoring, etc. But if you wish to incorporate the KYMC approach, your marketing strategy goes beyond mentioning these features. You’d focus on finding the customer’s motivation for better health or particular fitness goals and tailor the marketing message accordingly. 

How did L’Oreal Successfully use the “Know Your Customer’s Motivation” Marketing Strategy? 

L’Oreal is a French personal care company and the world’s largest cosmetic company. Its success story in the beauty industry is a classic example of how understanding the customer’s motivation and including this information can help create a dominating brand positioning in the market.

Identifying the Motivation & Crafting a Compelling Message

L’Oreal skillfully recognized the core motivating factor for many women around the world when it comes to beauty products—confidence. They understood that women use makeup not only to look good but also to feel empowered and self-assured. This allowed them to identify the motivation and tailor the marketing campaign and message accordingly. 

The iconic slogan “Because You’re Worth It” was launched in 1973 and is still relevant because it encapsulates the underlying motivation. This slogan is a simple yet powerful statement that goes beyond the wide range of products and features and speaks directly to a woman’s self-worth, a compelling message indeed. 

Reinforcing the Message & Building an Emotional Connection

Interestingly, L’Oreal’s marketing campaign goes beyond featuring supermodels. From time to time, they’ve showcased accomplished women from various fields—actresses, singers, scientists, etc. This enhanced the scope of their brand messaging as it included the idea that beauty goes hand in hand with achievement and personal fulfillment. 

By intelligently focusing on confidence and empowerment, L’Oreal was able to build and cater to an emotional connection with the target audience. Eventually, they positioned themselves and their products as more than just cosmetic products; they were tools for self-expression and achieving one’s full potential. This emotional connection fosters brand loyalty and encourages repeat purchases. 

Tailoring the Brand Message and Long-Term Impact

L’Oreal understands that motivation might vary within demographics, and different cultures might have different perceptions of beauty. They successfully used the “Know Your Customer’s Motivation” across different cultures and age groups to solve this conundrum. For example, when they were to target younger women, their message aimed at self-discovery and individuality, while for older women, they used messages like mature beauty and inner strengths. 

L’Oreal’s commitment to understanding customer motivations has paid off for decades. Their “Because You’re Worth It” slogan has been around since 1973 and is the longest-running and most recognizable slogan in advertising history. It allowed the beauty brand to maintain its global position, consistently exceeding sales targets and staying relevant in competitive markets. 

In conclusion, L’Oreal’s skillful implementation of KYCM’s marketing strategy helped them identify their customers’ core emotional motivator: confidence. The slogan “Because You’re Worth It” and imagery of accomplished women directly addressed this motivating factor. It helped the brand build an emotional connection, fostering brand loyalty. 

What is “Know Your Customer’s Motivation” Marketing Strategy? 

The “Know Your Customer’s Motivation” (KYMC) marketing strategy is more customer-centric than traditional marketing methods. It focuses extensively on understanding the underlying reasons why customers make purchase decisions and catering to those reasons.

Understanding the customer’s motivation allows a brand to target the “WHY” behind purchases. This information leads to more relevant messaging and higher conversion rates. When a brand addresses customers’ core needs and desires, they feel valued and understood. It fosters loyalty and positive brand perception.By uncovering these underlying and prominent motivations, businesses can tailor their marketing messages and product or service offerings to resonate deeply with the target audience. Eventually, this strategy has the potential to drive sales, increase brand engagement, and build stronger customer relationships.

Why is Knowing Your Customer’s Motivation Important? 

Traditional marketing focuses on the features and benefits of products and services; in comparison, KYCM goes beyond its scope. It strategically acknowledges the features that translate these benefits, which fulfill the deeper needs and desires or motivations of the customers. 

Understanding the customer’s motivations allows the brand to craft a compelling message that speaks directly to what matters most to the target customer and helps create a stronger emotional connection. Marketers can develop targeted campaigns by segmenting the audience based on motivations and tailoring campaigns for each segment, maximizing relevance and impact. 

By addressing the customer’s pain points, brands can showcase how a particular product or service solves their problems in a way that resonates with the audience’s motivations. It’s a fact that when customers feel understood and that their needs are addressed, they’re more likely to become loyal customers, fostering increased brand loyalty. 

Understanding the Customer Motivations

Multiple motivations drive customer behavior; some of the frameworks are discussed below. 

Markets can use Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. This classic model strategically proposes a hierarchy of needs, from basic physiological needs like food and water to self-actualization and personal fulfillment. It focuses on understanding how a particular product or service helps cater to consumers’ needs at different levels.

Motivational theories like “Achievement Motivation” or “Fear of Missing Out (FOMO)” clearly explain why customers strive for success or seek out social validation; all this can influence their purchase decisions. Developing detailed profiles of the ideal customer segment, including demographics, goals, challenges, and motivations, also helps in understanding their motivations. 

How to Uncover Customer Motivations? 

Before implementing this strategy, it’s important to first understand how to uncover customer motivations. Marketers can conduct customer surveys and feedback forms and ask them direct questions about their needs, wants, and decision-making processes. They can also analyze online conversations to understand customer sentiments and motivations related to the industry or products. 

Marketers can also track customer behavior through websites to determine what content resonates with them and intelligently identify purchase triggers. At the same time, focus groups and in-depth interviews can help marketers engage in quantitative research of the target audience to gain deeper insights into customer motivations. 

After acquiring relevant data, brands can translate it into actionable insights that help develop buyer personas, craft compelling, targeted messaging across channels, launch targeted campaigns, and comprehensively optimize the sales funnel. Remember that KYCM is an ongoing process that requires constant refinement of marketing strategy. 

Pros and Cons of “Know Your Customer’s Motivation” Marketing Strategy

Like every other marketing strategy, the “Know Your Customer’s Motivation” strategy has pros and cons, as discussed below. 

Pros

Focusing on motivations facilitates efficient target marketing, thereby maximizing the Return on Investment (ROI). Deeper customer insights also help differentiate the brand from competitors by addressing unmet customer needs and creating a compelling customer experience. 

Understanding customer motivations can facilitate innovation and inspiration for new products, services, or features that resonate seamlessly with the target audience. Eventually, it will bring multi-pronged benefits to the brand. 

Cons

Knowing your customers’ motivations requires significant investment in customer research and data analytics, as well as potentially creating detailed buyer personas. Gathering and analyzing this customer data can sometimes be overwhelming, especially for smaller businesses. There’s a significant risk of getting lost or misinterpreting the bigger picture.

Customer motivation changes and evolves due to changing market trends, personal circumstances, and economic conditions. Hence, implementing this strategy requires constant monitoring and adaptation. Also, collecting customer data requires careful handling and adherence to privacy regulations. 

KYCM might not be a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy. For certain classes of products or services with minimal emotional involvement, like basic office supplies, focusing on customer motivations might not be as effective. This strategy has a limited scope, and not every brand can benefit from it. 
In conclusion, the “Know Your Customer’s Motivations” marketing strategy can be a powerful tool with multi-pronged benefits. It gives clear and concise information about the “WHY” of customer’s buying decisions and uses this information to adjust marketing strategy for maximum impact.