Method Marketing: Stepping Into Your Customer's Shoes

You may be familiar with method acting, a technique in which the actor 'becomes' a character by identifying and understanding their motivations and emotions. But have you heard of method marketing? Method marketing is a term we have coined here at Delicious Digital Marketing. Digital marketers can use a similar market research method to connect with potential customers and transform how they feel about a brand. By playing the role of the target audience, you can recognize their wants, needs, and behaviors to develop effective messages that truly capture their attention, are relatable, and help solve their problems.

Our digital marketing team recently implemented method marketing with a trip to Belize to visit some of our Muy'Ono Resorts' clients. To play the role of potential guests, we physically stepped into the shoes of our consumers and learned about their experiences first-hand. This market research method allowed us to gain insight into guests' lives to create more powerful and valuable communication strategies with language related to their motivations. Keep reading to discover three ways I used method marketing as a research technique to enhance my copywriting for our Belize clients.

May 2022Cave tubing in Belize

1. Establishing Voice of Customer

We had the opportunity to participate in many guided tours alongside fellow guests, such as cave tubing and zip-lining. Between the van rides and the tours themselves, we could dive deeper into what's really going on inside our consumers' heads, including their likes, pains, and other valuable insights. Rather than making up customer personas in our heads, we got a better idea of who they actually are and their typical behaviors. I was exposed to the authentic 'voice of customer' by seeing and interacting with them in their environment. Because people want to hear their own voice, these insights helped me strengthen my copywriting to incorporate our customer's expectations and preferences. I absorbed their pains or confusions and integrated that into impactive copy that triggers their emotions and captures our solutions. While it seemed like natural conversations and small talk, I was acquiring valuable information through method marketing.

2. Realizing It's Not About You, It's About Them

Marketing to your target audience is about more than expressing all the amazing things your product or service offers. It is about relating to your consumers and showing them that you understand their pains and have a solution to solve their problems. Therefore, an effective copywriting strategy is less about you and more about them. Taking a walk in the shoes of people in our audience helped us identify with them and fully grasp their mindset. From first-hand conversations to observations, I determined both positive and negative emotional triggers that I can implement into valuable communication techniques. For example, method marketing allowed us to learn our consumers' views of the promised benefits of our services, which I can use to craft copy with those promises in mind. This powerful technique connects with the audience, allowing you to think as they think and feel as they feel. Using this direct personal experience in Belize, I can ensure my messaging relates to customers, provides them with a solution to their problems, and actually benefits them.

3. Distinguishing Audience Segments

While it is evident that our target audience is travelers, there are multiple different types of travelers. By physically placing ourselves in our customers' environment, we distinguished various customer categories based on real users. These audience segments enable you to further explore specific emotions, pain points, and behaviors related to that particular consumer, making it easier to develop compelling content and messaging that proves your product or service is worth their while. Instead of imagining the various potential personas, we had the picture painted right in front of us. Each Belize resort targets different groups of people for different reasons. For example, the jungle resort appeared to have more people looking for adventure and going on tours. On the other hand, many guests at the island resort were relaxing on the beach with a cold drink. This in-depth experience helped us ensure our target audience assumptions were correct and even opened our eyes to new segments we were previously unaware of.