Who is your ideal customer? And how does your brand serve them?

Yes, I know you have KPIs to hit this quarter. Leads. Sales. A specific revenue target. And so it can be easy to quickly drill down to targets.

But all marketing beings by asking… who is the ideal customer? And how does our brand serve them?

So I loved a lesson I recently read in a podcast guest application – ‘Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition.’

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories from throughout her career, I sat down with Kristen Stevens, Senior Marketing Manager for the US, at the Marine Stewardship Council. (https://www.msc.org/)

The Marine Stewardship Council is a nonprofit organization that was formed by the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever. It reported £32.73 million of total income in its most recent fiscal year ending in March 2023, which equates to roughly $41.3 million – 19% of the world's wild fisheries are engaged in the MSC program.

In 2023, Stevens oversaw 58 co-marketing campaigns for the MSC.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Here are some lessons from Stevens that emerged in our discussion.

• Turn critical feedback into your strength / learn to thrive in ambiguity
• The importance of a 'hero' metric that you and team work toward
• Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition
• Balance the lending and borrowing of trust and credibility in partnerships
• Present research with clear narrative arcs and actionable takeaways
• Structure feedback requests with specific lenses and pointed questions

Discussed in this episode

AI Quick Win Intensive – Get help building an Artificial Intelligence strategy that aligns with your brand’s value proposition. Join Flint McGlaughlin and the MeclabsAI team for an AI Quick Win Intensive (https://intensives.meclabsai.com/) from MarketingSherpa’s parent organization.

Data as Marketing Fertilizer: You can have piles and piles of data, but unless you know how to use the data correctly, it won’t get you very far (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/data)

Customer Value: The 4 essential levels of value propositions (https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/levels-of-value-propositions)

Get more episodes

This article is distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters). Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one.

For more insights, check out…

This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages (https://meclabs.com/course/) free digital marketing course.

Apply to be a guest
If you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application

Most Recent Episodes

November 19, 2024 Mature Content

Go-To-Market Strategy: The voice of your customers should lead your marketing strategy (episode #118)

We’ve all seen it in the movies. A character has an invisibility cloak, or drinks a potion, or perhaps turns into a ghost. And then, oooh how tantalizing, they can see what goes on when they’re...

Listen · 50:00

November 12, 2024 Mature Content

Strategic Advertising and Marketing: It’s not what you make, it’s what you make possible (episode #117)

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Daniel Burstein Podcaster

Daniel Burstein is the Senior Director of Content and Marketing at MarketingSherpa and the host of the ‘How I Made It In Marketing’ podcast, where he talks to marketing leaders about the lessons learned through their careers.

He also reports on successful marketing campaigns and industry data in MarketingSherpa articles, and helps facilitate the AI Guild from MarketingSherpa's parent organization, MECLABS Institute.

Daniel has 23 years of experience in copywriting, content writing, interviewing, speaking, business journalism, content marketing, sales enablement, and field marketing communications.

Who is your ideal customer? And how does your brand serve them?

Yes, I know you have KPIs to hit this quarter. Leads. Sales. A specific revenue target. And so it can be easy to quickly drill down to targets.

But all marketing beings by asking… who is the ideal customer? And how does our brand serve them?

So I loved a lesson I recently read in a podcast guest application – ‘Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition.’

To hear the story behind that lesson, along with many more lesson-filled stories from throughout her career, I sat down with Kristen Stevens, Senior Marketing Manager for the US, at the Marine Stewardship Council. (https://www.msc.org/)

The Marine Stewardship Council is a nonprofit organization that was formed by the World Wildlife Fund and Unilever. It reported £32.73 million of total income in its most recent fiscal year ending in March 2023, which equates to roughly $41.3 million – 19% of the world's wild fisheries are engaged in the MSC program.

In 2023, Stevens oversaw 58 co-marketing campaigns for the MSC.

Stories (with lessons) about what she made in marketing

Here are some lessons from Stevens that emerged in our discussion.

• Turn critical feedback into your strength / learn to thrive in ambiguity
• The importance of a 'hero' metric that you and team work toward
• Take the time to understand your target audience deeply and your value proposition
• Balance the lending and borrowing of trust and credibility in partnerships
• Present research with clear narrative arcs and actionable takeaways
• Structure feedback requests with specific lenses and pointed questions

Discussed in this episode

AI Quick Win Intensive – Get help building an Artificial Intelligence strategy that aligns with your brand’s value proposition. Join Flint McGlaughlin and the MeclabsAI team for an AI Quick Win Intensive (https://intensives.meclabsai.com/) from MarketingSherpa’s parent organization.

Data as Marketing Fertilizer: You can have piles and piles of data, but unless you know how to use the data correctly, it won’t get you very far (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/article/interview/data)

Customer Value: The 4 essential levels of value propositions (https://marketingexperiments.com/value-proposition/levels-of-value-propositions)

Get more episodes

This article is distributed through the MarketingSherpa email newsletter (https://www.marketingsherpa.com/newsletters). Sign up for free if you’d like to get more episodes like this one.

For more insights, check out…

This podcast is not about marketing – it is about the marketer. It draws its inspiration from the Flint McGlaughlin quote, “The key to transformative marketing is a transformed marketer” from the Become a Marketer-Philosopher: Create and optimize high-converting webpages (https://meclabs.com/course/) free digital marketing course.

Apply to be a guest
If you would like to apply to be a guest on How I Made It In Marketing, here is the podcast guest application – https://www.marketingsherpa.com/page/podcast-guest-application

Most Recent Episodes

November 19, 2024 Mature Content

Go-To-Market Strategy: The voice of your customers should lead your marketing strategy (episode #118)

We’ve all seen it in the movies. A character has an invisibility cloak, or drinks a potion, or perhaps turns into a ghost. And then, oooh how tantalizing, they can see what goes on when they’re...

Listen · 50:00

November 12, 2024 Mature Content

Strategic Advertising and Marketing: It’s not what you make, it’s what you make possible (episode #117)

I would never read so much text. This is long and boring to me. Versions of this have been said to me throughout my career from designers. And not to pick on designers, but I really don’t care....

Listen · 48:49

November 5, 2024 Mature Content

Sales and Marketing Persuasion: Be Batman, because nobody is really Superman (episode #116)

One of the biggest transformations in my career came when I went from trying to sell people with my writing, to trying to help them.Helping people understand whether a product or service is truly...

Listen · 1:15:01

Load More Episodes

Daniel Burstein Podcaster

Daniel Burstein is the Senior Director of Content and Marketing at MarketingSherpa and the host of the ‘How I Made It In Marketing’ podcast, where he talks to marketing leaders about the lessons learned through their careers.

He also reports on successful marketing campaigns and industry data in MarketingSherpa articles, and helps facilitate the AI Guild from MarketingSherpa's parent organization, MECLABS Institute.

Daniel has 23 years of experience in copywriting, content writing, interviewing, speaking, business journalism, content marketing, sales enablement, and field marketing communications.