Maslow’s Hierarchy helps understand consumer needs

Email

Phone

Follow us

Our book

Brand Toolkit

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides a smart logic and focus on understanding consumer needs. The best marketers gain comfort in exploring the psychology models to help with how consumers see the world, whether borrowing Carl Jung’s archetypes to help define a brand’s personality or Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to tap into the mindset of consumers.

As famous as Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, there is very little scientific basis to the idea. That’s ok. We are only borrowing the concept, not psychoanalyzing an individual. In theory, Maslow used the terms “physiological”, “safety”, “belonging and love”, “social needs,” or “esteem,” and “self-actualization.”

Maslow's hierarchy

 

The basic thoughts for marketers are that consumers will focus on their basic needs before they can reach for things like esteem or self-actualization. During the coronavirus pandemic, we can even see how we return to our basic needs of food, shelter, safety, even ahead of status or money or using fashion as an expression. 

Going beyond Maslow's Hierarchy

 

As a brand leader, you can learn from the basics of Maslow’s Hierarchy, but let’s twist it into something workable for you. Above, you can see how I have turned Maslow’s Hierarchy zones into three functional need types, including the day-to-day needs, impact on your life, and belonging. And, this leads into three emotional need types, including trust, expression, and realization.  

 

Take your brand knowledge to new heights with our Beloved Brands playbook

Beloved Brands is a comprehensive guide that covers the fundamentals of brand management. It goes deep on strategic thinking, brand positioning, brand plan development, advertising decisions, media planning, marketing analytics, and the brand financials. This is an opportunity to build your marketing skills to help your career. And, it will provide you with the roadmap for driving growth on your brand. 

Beloved Brands book for marketers

Marketers see Beloved Brands playbook as a go-to resource, as they keep it within arm’s reach for any new project. We are thrilled to see that it has received a 5-star rating from nearly 90% of Amazon reviewers. Additionally, we have also created playbooks for B2B Brands and Healthcare Brands, catering to specific industries.

Consumer benefits

Transforming Maslow’s hierarchy into functional needs

To start, let’s discuss the functional needs of your consumers:

  • First, the day-to-day needs include “works better for you,” “simplifies your life,” and “helps your family.”
  • Second, the life impact needs include “getting smarter,” “saving you money,” and “health.”
  • Third, the belonging needs include “staying connected,” “sensory appeal,” the “experience you get.” 

Below, we have expanded on each of these functional consumer needs to help you begin thinking about your brand positioning. Look for the ideal functional benefits to differentiate your brand from competitors. 

Functional consumer needs

Now, let’s look at the consumers’ emotional needs from the vantage of Maslow’s hierarchy:

  • First, the trust needs include “how to stay in control,” “feel myself,” and “self-assured.”
  • Next, you move up to the expression needs that include “feel free,” “get noticed,” and “feel liked.”
  • Finally, move up to the realization needs, including the “curiosity for knowledge,” “sense of optimism,” and “feel comfortable.” 

Below, you can find an expanded list of emotional consumer needs to focus on your brand positioning. Use these ideal emotional benefits to differentiate your brand from competitors.

Emotional consumer needs

Brand Positioning video lesson

Our brand positioning statement video shows how to use our functional benefit cheatsheet and our emotional benefit cheatsheet to help build the ideal brand positioning statement. 

Play Video about Brand Positioning Statement examples that differentiate

To view, use the ▶️ controls to play or volume buttons 

Consumers have changed

It takes a smart strategy to balance the rational and emotional management of the brand-to-consumer relationship. These beloved brands are so exceptional because of how well they treat their most loyal consumers. They make them feel loved.  

The consumers of today must be won over. They are surrounded by the clutter of 5,000 brand messages a day that fight for a glimpse of their attention. That is 1.8 million per year or one message every 11 waking seconds. 

Consumers are continuously distracted—walking, talking, texting, searching, watching, replying—and all at the same time. They glance past most brand messages all day long. Their brain quickly rejects boring, irrelevant, or unnecessary messages. Brands must capture the consumer’s imagination right away, with a brand idea that is simple, unique. It must create as much excitement as a first-time encounter. 

Consumers are tired of being burned by broken brand promises. Once lied to, their well-guarded instincts begin to doubt first, test second, and at any point, they will cast aside any brand that does not live up to the original promise that captured them on the first encounter. A brand must be worthy of love. The best brands of today have a soul that exists deep within the culture of the brand organization. 

Brands must be consumer focused

The brand’s purpose must be able to explain why the people who work behind the scenes of the brand come to work every day so energized and ready to over-deliver on the brand’s behalf. This purpose becomes a firm conviction, with inner motivations, beliefs, and values that influences and inspires every employee to want to be part of the brand. This brand conviction must be so firm that the brand would never make a choice that directly contradicts their internal belief system. Consumers start to see, understand, and appreciate the level of conviction with the brand. 

Brands must listen, observe, and start to know their consumer’s thoughts before they even think them. Not only does the brand meet their functional needs, but the brand must also heroically beat down the consumer’s enemy that torments their life every day. 

Borrowing from Maslow's Hierarchy of needs will help you organize your thinking on our consumers' needs.

Marketing Excellence

We empower the ambitious to achieve the extraordinary.

Without a doubt, our role at Beloved Brands is to help the ambitious marketers who are trying to improve their marketing skills. Most importantly, we will prepare you so you can reach your full potential in your career. You will learn about strategic thinking, brand positioning, brand plans, marketing execution, and marketing analytics. As well, we provide a suite of marketing tools, templates that will make it easier to do your job, processes that you can follow, and provocative thoughts to trigger your thinking. 

Have you gone through an assessment of the marketing skills of your team? Take a look below:

The fundamentals of marketing matter.

Our Beloved Brands marketing training programs cover different streams to suit the type of marketer you are. For instance, our marketing training covers consumer marketing, B2B marketing, and Healthcare marketing. 

The marketing fundamentals that we show in this article are part of what we use in our marketing training programs. Ambitious marketers will learn about strategic thinking, brand positioning, brand plans, marketing execution, writing creative briefs, advertising decision-making, marketing analytics, and marketing finance

Importantly, when you invest in our marketing training program, you will help your team gain the marketing skills they need to succeed. Without a doubt, you will see your people make smarter decisions and produce exceptional work that drives business growth. 

Finally, I wrote our Beloved Brands playbook to help you build a brand that your consumers will love. If you are a B2B marketer, try our B2B Brands playbook. And, if you are a Healthcare Marketer, try our Healthcare Brands playbook.

We designed our brand templates to make it easier for you to do your job.

Moreover, we provide brand templates that help you run your brand. For instance, you can find templates for marketing plans, brand positioning, creative briefs, and business reviews. Altogether, we offer brand toolkits with all the presentation slides you need. 

Beloved Brands video

Everything a Marketing must know about.

Importantly, Brand leaders need to know how to think, define, plan, execute and analyze with the best of them. Moreover, while the brand leaders don’t really know how to do anything, they are looked upon to make every decision. Have a look at our five minute video on everything a marketer must know. To read more, click on this link: Everything.

To view, use the ▶️ controls to play or volume buttons 

If you are looking to make your marketing team smarter, we can help. To get started, email Graham Robertson at [email protected]

Beloved Brands logo

Graham Robertson

Email us

Call us

Follow us

Our book

Brand Toolkit

Beloved Brands Marketing Training Video

Elevate your team’s performance with our marketing training. The smarter they are, the greater your brand growth will be.

Our Best Posts for Beloved Brands blog

Click to read more

Sample Chapter of Beloved Brands

Use the X for full view and > to turn to the next page

5/5

The cheat code for Brand Managers

It is without a doubt, the most practical book for those who want to follow brand management that I have ever read in my life! Beloved Brands is written by a real, experienced marketeer for marketers. 

5/5

I have Brand Love for Beloved Brands!

As a 24-year marketing veteran at a Fortune 100 company, I thought I knew everything I needed to know about building brands. Graham has an amazing gift of bringing to life the critical elements of brand building and management in a delightful, easy-to-understand way. 

5/5

Beloved Brands is a phenomenal book

I know other brand managers who have used this to review their business and create their annual brand plans. Undeniably, Beloved Brands is phenomenal in concept and execution. Highly recommend.

Brand Toolkits

Brand Case Studies

As a marketing professional, you can learn from what some of the best brands have been doing. We use case studies to showcase the fundamentals of marketing.

Video on our Beloved Brands Mini MBA

Our video lessons

Everything a marketer must know how to do

To view, use arrows or click to go to YouTube.

How to build your brand positioning

To view, use arrows or click to go to YouTube.

Beloved Brands graham robertson

Contact Information

Graham Robertson

Email: [email protected]

Phone: 416–885–3911

Search our site for any marketing topic

M a r k e t i n g    B o o k

beloved brands

the playbook for how to create a brand your consumers will love

With our Beloved Brands playbook, you will learn to think strategically, define your brand positioning, write a marketing plan, make execution decisions, and analyze your brand. Our readers tell us they reach for Beloved Brands as a reference tool to help them with the day-to-day management of their brand. We are proud that 89% of online reviewers have rated Beloved Brands a 5-star. As a result, Beloved Brands has been a #1 bestseller in brand management. We also have the B2B Brands playbook and our Healthcare Brands playbook

Marketing Training

The smarter your team, the better the results you will see!

As a marketing team leader, you know that your team’s success is essential for your company’s growth. Our Beloved Brands marketing training gives your team the skills they need to make strategic decisions, produce exceptional work, and drive business growth. They will learn to define brand positioning, write effective plans, improve brief writing, make informed execution decisions, and analyze their brand’s performance.

We have designed our marketing training program to build the fundamental skills to help your team reach their full potential. We will work with your team to help them learn to take on Strategic Thinking, Brand Positioning, Marketing Planning, Marketing Execution, and Brand Analytics. 

Brand Toolkit
Beloved Brands Popup
Beloved Brands Mini MBA