The traditional notion of a happy marriage was one between a man and a woman who enjoyed each other’s company, had similar career aspirations, and shared the same views on family and lifestyle. While there is still plenty of value in this traditional model, more individuals are choosing to marry outside of their faith, nationality, and/or social class. This represents a sea change in the way society functions, and it requires businesses to adjust their approach to marriage and family marketing.

What Is Marriage And Family Marketing?

Traditional marketing has largely remained the province of businesses targeting specific areas of the world. While there are certainly exceptions to this rule, marketers have typically shied away from direct involvement in tying sales to matrimonial events. That is, business has generally stayed removed from the marital sphere. However, as people get married later in life and have fewer ties to their family of origin, the importance of family and marital bonds has become more apparent. Further, as people become more mobile and global in their careers, the location of a customer base and the nature of their social connections is becoming more vital to a business’s success. In this new paradigm, businesses cannot afford to ignore the role that family and marriage play in consumers’ decision-making processes.

Is Market Analysis Of Products And Services Suitable For Marital Discussion?

As marketing has evolved to become a much more holistic discipline, drawing from fields such as psychology, sociology, anthropology, political science, and business, so has marriage and family marketing. The basic premise of marriage and family marketing is that households are comprised of individuals with varying interests and needs, whose interactions with a product or service influence the willingness to part with money and/or personal information. Under this paradigm, market research is merely an extension of the brand-building process, integrated within a business’ overall marketing strategy. Thus, instead of seeking individual or household responses to general marketing questions, marketers should be taking the time to learn about the interests and concerns of the customers’ that their products and services are intended to appeal to.

Why Should Business Owners And Marketers Consider This New Perspective?

Marketing is a continuous process, never completely complete, and this is especially relevant when considering that consumers’ needs change over time. It is therefore essential that businesses maintain a two-way communication channel with their customers, allowing them to provide feedback, get valuable insight, and move the needle forward. According to HubSpot Blogs research, only 21% of respondents have a good understanding of their customers, while 71% have either a limited or no understanding of who their customers are.

These results underscore the importance of open, two-way communication between a business and its customers. By seeking to understand the interests and motivations of their customers, businesses can craft products and services to meet those needs and wants. Further, gathering this information in one place allows businesses to connect the dots between what they know about their customers and what those customers are saying about the brand, as a whole, both positive and negative. This level of inbound marketing insight allows businesses to identify areas for improvement, identify niche markets, and better understand the underlying factors that make up a customer’s decision-making process.

Getting Started

According to HubSpot Blogs, businesses can begin the journey towards more effective marketing by asking themselves a set of clarifying questions. The first step is to determine how they will measure the success of their efforts. Only then can businesses set about designing a plan that will allow them to engage with their customers in a meaningful way.

This new perspective on marketing offers businesses a way to reevaluate the way they do things, putting a stronger focus on what is important to them, their customers, and their communities.