Most businesses underestimate how hard it is to change people’s behavior. There is an assumption built into most marketing and advertising campaigns that if a business can just get your attention, give you a crucial piece of information about their brand, tell you about new features, or associate their brand with warm and fuzzy emotions, that they will be able to convince you to buy.
On the basis of this assumption, most marketing departments focus too much on persuasion. Each interaction with a potential customer is designed to change their beliefs and preferences. Once the customer is convinced of the superiority of a product, they will naturally make a purchase. And once they’ve made a purchase, then that should lead to repeat purchases in the future.
This all seems quite intuitive until you stop thinking about customers as an abstract mass and start thinking about them as individuals. In fact, start by thinking about your own behavior. How easy is it for you to change?
It's very hard to change behavior. Given to their own devices, individuals will continue to behave a certain way unless nudged in the right direction. I often refer to this concept as proactive vs reactive marketing. In proactive marketing, the business is using direct marketing to communicate in an effort to change behavior. This often takes the form of an offer or incentive to incite the behavior change. In reactive marketing, money is spent to gain awareness and then it is left up to the customer to interact with the business by clicking on the ad that has been served up multiple times. Both of these models are important for the overall marketing strategy, but one is much more cost effective than the other.
First, you have to optimize your goals.
For marketers, this means focusing on how to get consumers to interact with products rather than just thinking about them. As an example, our local Sunday newspaper often comes in a bag with a sample product attached that encourages potential consumers to engage with products.
Interaction is the most important part of proactive marketing. Be sure to measure the results on the behavior you are trying to change. Remember, the biggest thing to watch when analyzing behavior change is did you change enough behavior to compensate for any increases in offer to entice the change? Inevitably there are many customers that won't change behavior, but will take you up on your increased offer, so you just reduced margins for the same behavior.
I try to instill into my team to focus on the individual and try to understand the mindset of our customer. Are the incentives we are giving going to change their behavior? Try to ask, "if it were me, would this offer convince me to engage with this communication?" Always put yourself in the shoes of your customer and focus on their experience to achieve the desired behavior change.