Understanding our customers is paramount in marketing, but getting to know what they really want is incredibly tricky. It’s one of several big takeaways from the course content in the CMO Program at Kellogg/Northwestern. I really enjoyed diving into the various levels and kinds of customer desires, intents, pains, and complex feelings toward brands, perceived value, and general consumerism.  

What we do know, definitively, is what customers say they want isn’t even close to the whole story. There are most certainly deeper, subconscious desires at play and these unknowns have HUGE implications for how effective our marketing can be.

Even Shrek knows that customers’ desires, just like onions, come in layers – from the simple stuff we can easily talk about to the hidden things we don’t even realize. To really connect with our customers, and hopefully build extreme customer loyalty, we need to understand all these different levels.

Basically, customer goals fall into three main areas: rational, emotional, and social. Let’s break them down:

• Rational Goals: The Basics. These are the practical things customers know they want and can easily explain. Think “must-haves.” Like, someone might want a car that’s fuel-efficient, safe, and affordable. Businesses usually focus on these because they’re easy to deal with. But if we only focus on these, we might blend in with everyone else.
  
  
• Emotional Goals: The Unspoken. These are the personal, sometimes sensitive desires that customers might know about but not say out loud. It’s about how things make them feel. Someone might want a car that makes them feel cool or adventurous, but they might not admit it. These hidden feelings are key to connecting with customers on a deeper level. As Dan Ariely explains in Predictably Irrational, people are often driven by emotions they’re not fully aware of.

   

• Social Goals: The Subconscious. These are the desires customers don’t even know they have. They’re deep-down motivations, often tied to who they are and where they belong. For example, someone might like a brand because of what it symbolizes without realizing it. These subconscious drivers are powerful when it comes to how people see brands and how loyal they are. 

A lot of businesses focus on the rational goals that customers can easily tell them. That makes sense—it’s straightforward, and it helps with positioning and communicating value. But there’s so much more to explore! By understanding the unspoken emotional and subconscious social goals, we can make our offers way more compelling, build stronger brand connections, and get a real edge on the competition.

How to Tap Into Unarticulated and Subconscious Desires

So, how do we find these hidden desires? Here are some ideas:

• • Go Beyond Surface-Level Data. Don’t just listen to what customers say; watch what they do. Like P&G, shadowing customers and doing focus groups can reveal things that surveys can’t. And pay attention to the feelings and “folklore” within your own organization.
  • Ask Open-Ended Questions. Instead of leading questions that just confirm what you already think, ask questions that get customers to share their deeper thoughts and feelings.
  • Look for Symbolic Meaning. Remember that brands are powerful symbols, and customers might attach emotional or social meaning to them beyond the product itself.
  • Emphasize Meaning, Not Just Features. A brand’s purpose should connect with customer’s desires on a deeper level. This can really affect their purchasing decisions and brand loyalty.
  • Utilize Discovery Workshops. Workshops can help you uncover and act on these hidden needs. By getting different perspectives, you can find new and actionable solutions.

And I’ve seen the “Five Whys” mentioned in several places, often attributed back to Toyota. It’s a means for uncovering deep-rooted issues of a problem or reasons for feelings. Toyota embraced the Five Whys to optimize manufacturing and reduce production delays. Marketers can use them to peel back the layers of customer desire. The process is simple: follow a customer’s answer to an important question with “Why?” five times … or as many as needed to discover any hidden details. For example, “Oh, you didn’t like the online form. Why?” “Ok, it was too long. Why, or how long should it be?” “I see; why did it take a long time to answer #5?” You get the idea.

Irrelevant Might Not Mean Unimportant

Building a customer-centric organization starts with understanding all of the customer’s needs, even the ones they’re not aware of themselves. Sometimes, an irrelevant attribute of a product can signal quality or value to a customer, even if the attribute itself doesn’t serve a functional purpose.

Understanding customers is about more than just meeting their basic needs. To truly connect and build lasting loyalty, we have to tap into their emotional and social goals – the desires that are often hidden just below the surface, waiting to be discovered.