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Are You Using Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs For Your Marketing?
LEADERSHIP
Are You Using Maslow's Hierarchy Of Needs For
Your Marketing?
By Stormie Andrews , Former Forbes Councils Member.
for Forbes Agency Council, COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)
Oct 28, 2019, 07:00am EDT
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As marketing becomes more and more personalized, your ability to access a customer's
psyche is more important than ever. While technology has proven central to these efforts,
there’s another way to peer into your customers' minds than by simply observing them.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides a way of evaluating your customers' motivations
beyond what raw data can normally tell us. With these actionable insights, you can create
emotionally compelling marketing that appeals to specific needs of your customers.
What Is Maslow’s Hierarchy Of Needs?
Created by psychologist Abraham Maslow, Maslow’s hierarchy of needs posits that
humans have universal needs they must fulfill. These can range from physiological and
safety needs to more abstract ones such as love, esteem or self-fulfillment. While
popularly portrayed as a pyramid, research indicates that the fulfillment of one need is not
necessarily dependent on another. This gives marketers the opportunity to appeal to each
need individually and to each customer looking to fulfill them.
Maslow’s needs provide poles around which you can organize your marketing efforts. You
can specifically target your marketing to appeal to someone’s need for esteem, love and
fulfillment, or simply their need to survive. While there may be some variation across
cultures, studies show that these needs persist globally. The universality of Maslow’s
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hierarchy of needs gives you limitless options to use it for your marketing efforts, and
especially for your buyer personas.
Maslow And Buyer Personas
A buyer persona is simply an outline of an idealized customer that emphasizes their
internal motivations and pain points. Rather than solely relying on hard data points, such
as income or home address, a buyer persona explores the intangible desires that drive
customers to make purchases. A buyer persona might be as simple as a chart with several
bullet points or may take the form of an elaborate story. However you decide to present
the persona, it will contain the essence of what drives a customer.
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs provides special insight into the crafting of a buyer persona,
offering a focal point that makes sense of a customer’s motivations. It can help you to
align each quality you identify of your idealized buyer with a specific need, making for a
more realistic and effective buyer persona. With this information, you can devise a
marketing strategy that better presents your business as a solution to your desired
customers.
Maslow And Triggering Events
When developing your buyer personas, one question you should ask about their
motivations is, "Why now?" What was the triggering event that made them look for your
goods and services now versus two or three years ago? A triggering event activates a
particular need, which can be understood within Maslow’s hierarchy. If you can identify
both, you can position yourself appropriately to your ideal buyers right when they begin
their journey.
Once you know what pressures led a potential customer to you, you can craft messaging to
reach others like them much earlier in the buying cycle. This gives you the ability to
become a resource to that person before your competitors even know they exist. Even if
they decide against buying right now, or even choose another business, they’ll remember
you and may come back later when they’re ready to buy.
Positioning Your Marketing To Fulfill A Need
When we think about applying Maslow’s hierarchy to marketing, it becomes immediately
apparent that there are distinct needs that will require their own set of messaging to
reach. The messaging for someone who is looking to fulfill physiological needs is
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dramatically different than someone who’s looking to fulfill esteem needs. If we think
about the specific needs a buyer persona will want to fulfill at a specific level within
Maslow’s hierarchy, we can craft our marketing to reach the specific type of buyer we hope
to reach.
For example, say someone just received a major promotion and is in the market for a
luxury car. We might say that this person is trying to fulfill a self-actualization need, and
the car is a status symbol that will bring them esteem among their new peers. On the other
hand, someone who is living paycheck to paycheck and who just got a new job will simply
want a method of transportation they can rely on.
Conclusion
There are endless possibilities to reach new customers when you pair buyer personas with
Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Combining insights from both can help you better identify
the needs of your customers and better position your business to fulfill them. This can
make your business more responsive to what your customers are looking for when they
need it most, helping you adapt to — and even get ahead of — changing tastes and trends.
Ultimately, thinking about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs when creating your buyer
personas can improve your business.
Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful
public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
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Forbes Accolades
By Stormie Andrews, COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based). Expert speaker on marketing,
sales, and buyer personas and Founder of Yokel Local, a leading inbound marketing agency in
Las Vegas.
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LEADERSHIP
Emotional Intelligence: A Natural Advantage That
Makes Mothers Exceptional Leaders
By Sarat Chakravarthi , Forbes Councils Member.
for Forbes Coaches Council, COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based)
Mar 07, 2025, 03:06pm EST
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Sarat Chakravarthi is the founder and CEO of LeadYouth.
GETTY
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From the moment a mother soothes her crying child, mediates a sibling argument or
encourages her teenager through self-doubt, she is leading. For many mothers, emotional
intelligence—the ability to build relationships, care for others, navigate setbacks and
support those around them—comes naturally. A woman who can guide a child through
life’s challenges is more than capable of leading a team, a project or a company. It’s time
to recognize motherhood for what it is: a masterclass in leadership.
As the mother of four teenagers, I have seen this firsthand. The leadership skills I utilize in
my professional role are the same as those I apply as a mother at home.
Five Reasons Mothers Make Extraordinary Leaders
Since 2023, emotional intelligence skills have been among the top of the list of core skills
employers are seeking, according to the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs Report.
If emotional intelligence is the key skill set leaders need, mothers have a natural
advantage.
Mothers make powerful leaders because:
1. Leadership Is An Affair Of The Heart
Leadership flourishes through emotional connection. Likewise, parenting thrives on a
mother’s instinctive ability to nurture, support and unlock the potential of her children.
Women build families, and teams function much like families—when nurtured with care,
trust and support, they stick together through challenges and triumphs. As mothers, we
are already adept at guiding, inspiring, challenging, enabling and encouraging others to
achieve shared aspirations for the common good.
2. They Excel At Managing Diverse Talents
A mom overseeing a multi-child household is equivalent to a leader managing a diverse
team. Each child brings unique personality traits, needs, strengths and weaknesses. A
mom uses emotional intelligence to understand each perspective, applies diplomacy to
resolve conflicts and creates an environment where everyone feels heard, valued and
supported. Isn’t that exactly what a leader must do? An effective cross-functional team
leader tailors support to each member's emotional and professional requirements, helping
them develop in ways that benefit both the individual and the organization.
3. Women Haven’t Just Endured—They’ve Persisted
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Throughout history, women have been shamed, silenced, denied opportunities and forced
to compromise, especially mothers. These same barriers exist in leadership, but when
overcome, they shape women into extraordinary leaders. Mothers excel in crisis
management—watch how brave and relentless they become when their children need
protection, help or justice. They challenge and fight until they get what’s needed. Their
courage, resilience, empathy and grace shouldn’t be undervalued; they are the very
essence of authentic leadership.
4. Mothers Are Adept At Balancing Priorities
Mothers excel at multitasking and managing competing priorities gracefully. Despite
challenges, they accomplish their many responsibilities with composure. They coordinate
household tasks, meal preparation, academic support for their children and emotional
care for family members—all often while pursuing their own professional goals.
The constant juggling of responsibilities creates emotional and physical demands, but the
ability to prioritize effectively under pressure demonstrates natural leadership qualities,
enabling moms to handle complex and evolving challenges with both efficiency and grace.
5. They Embrace Uncertainty And The Unknown
As mothers, we learn how to become comfortable with uncertainty. You can read an
infinite number of parenting books to study for the next stage or phase of your child’s life
and still feel unprepared when the actual situation arises. You’ll inevitably face moments
of self-doubt, anxiety and indecision.
Much like parenting books, leadership theories provide frameworks but can’t replace realworld experience. Accepting uncertainty becomes essential. Making mistakes and lacking
immediate answers are typical parts of the process. We grow through these learning
experiences, and everyone in these positions—both mother and leader—has faced similar
challenges.
Overcoming The Challenges Women Leaders Face
Despite making up 46.8% of the United States labor force, the percentage of women
leading Fortune 500 companies reached an all-time high in 2023 of only 10.6%. What’s
holding women back from these leadership roles, and how can we overcome these
challenges?
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Lack Of Assertiveness And Independent Decision Making
Growing up, women are often taught to seek approval before making big decisions and to
defer to male figures for validation. This mindset can make it difficult to trust your
judgment and leaves you hesitant to assert yourself in personal and professional spaces.
Additionally, a woman’s confidence is often mistaken for aggression, while a man’s
confidence is seen as assertive and ambitious. One study showed that women receive 22%
more feedback directly related to their personalities (e.g., abrasive, difficult, friendly,
helpful) regardless of their performance level than men. A woman with the same skillset
as a male counterpart has to work harder to prove herself and is judged against a different
set of standards. I’ve seen so many women struggle with the same internal battle,
conditioned to believe that leadership and decisiveness belong to men while we take on
supportive roles. This way of thinking holds us back and keeps us from taking positions of
influence and authority.
As women and mothers, we need to trust ourselves and have the confidence to take action
even when the outcome is uncertain. Just as we expect men to share responsibilities at
home, we also need to feel empowered to adopt traits traditionally seen as masculine, such
as assertiveness, risk-taking and strategic decision making. By balancing these traits with
our natural strengths, we can break free from outdated expectations and lead with both
authority and empathy. As women, we need to embrace our confidence and assert our
authority, not worry about what others think.
Work-Life Balance And Self-Sacrifice
Women often stretch themselves too thin, prioritizing family, work and responsibilities
while neglecting their own needs and goals. It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing that
sacrificing personal goals is the price of being a good mother, partner or daughter.
However, when you expend all of your energy on others without refueling yourself,
exhaustion sets in, and it’s harder to be fully present in any role.
I’ve learned that taking time for myself isn’t selfish; it’s essential. Managing my energy
and setting boundaries allows me to be more present and effective in both my personal
and professional life. My family won’t fall apart if I step away for a few hours to care for
myself, and neither will my career.
Women Working Against Women
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Internalized societal biases have made it difficult for women to fully support one another,
often fostering competition instead of collaboration. The women in our lives who opted to
focus on traditional roles in the home as mothers and caregivers often discourage and
look down on career-minded women because they believe that we can’t best serve our
families if our attention is distracted by work. I grew up seeing women working against
each other in this manner, and for a long time, I struggled with the same mindset. I was
judging myself and feeling that I wasn’t good enough. This self-doubt, reinforced by
societal expectations, can hold us back from stepping into leadership roles and embracing
our full potential.
But success isn’t a limited resource—when women support and uplift one another, we all
rise. Rather than competing, we need to create space for each other, celebrate our
accomplishments and understand that true leadership comes from empowering those
around us.
Empathy, adaptability, problem-solving, resilience—these skills are the recipe for being an
amazing mother and... a successful leader. The world needs more emotionally intelligent
leaders, and it’s time for women to own their superpower, recognize their leadership
potential and lead with confidence.
Forbes Coaches Council is an invitation-only community for leading business and career
coaches. Do I qualify?
Follow me on LinkedIn. Check out my website.
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Forbes Accolades
By Sarat Chakravarthi, COUNCIL POST | Membership (fee-based). Sarat Chakravarthi is the
founder and CEO of LeadYouth. Read Sarat Chakravarthi's full executive profile here.
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