Behavior

A marketing tip is of value only if it helps you do something in your business at a lower cost or at greater profit. Otherwise it is of academic interest only. Yet, what we call ‘academic’ implies knowledge and we are all conditioned to think that knowledge is power. That’s not quite correct however.

As I wrote in Google Semantic Search, “I am a firm believer that knowledge is power but only if it leads to comprehension.” It is comprehension that allows us to understand what to do with the knowledge we have or the knowledge we acquire. Comprehension implies the ability to expand and enrich our view of the world. All of which, today, leads us to the topic of behavior.

I’ve given talks about search and marketing to company executives and industry specialists in 34 major cities and 12 different countries on three continents. If that sounds impressive consider how all these talks on search and social media and marketing were, truly, about the same thing: behavior.

Search is marketing. But marketing is determined by end-user behavior. It is logical to conclude then that search is also behavior. And that behavior is changing which means that both your approach to search engine optimization and marketing will need to change, in turn.

Google, using the power afforded to it by its access to a massive amount of data, made pretty much the same point when it shared insights that show how the pandemic and the forced time spend living apart from each other has subtly changed the collective perspective of individuals.

Reflected in the search terms used we see a shift in the attitude to work and leisure which also affects how we curate our personal identity, establish our values and define what we stand for and how we want to invest our time.

Summarised this shift is towards, self-awareness, self-reliance and increased personal responsibility for our mental and physical wellbeing. There is also an increased awareness of what we don’t know which is reflected in a willingness to search online for data that covers ‘details’ such as the length of time necessary to perfectly boil an egg, the origins of vanilla flavoring and the average length of time it takes to walk a mile.

As I made clear in Intentional human behavior is the observable facet of many other, deeper, character traits. ?

When human behavior changes to the point that the change is measurable it reflects deeper changes taking place at a psychological and emotional level which affect the commonly shared values and ideas that go on to become the distinctive cultures we experience in each country and its market place. These changes then directly impact businesses and affect marketing.

I make it sound like you need to be a psychologist and a social analyst in order to just run your business. For sure that would help but both these specializations represent formalizations of knowledge that is not necessary to comprehend the change taking place.

What is necessary is the ability to be in tune with your target audience and organically evolve to match its needs. And for that what you need is:

• Good communication skills. Don’t add to the ‘noise’ by hosing content out there. Be precise in what you say and explain with clarity how what you do helps solve a problem or answer a question.
• An authentic marketing strategy. You market with an overriding objective that’s common to every marketing effort – to increase sales. For that to happen however you need to avoid another Fyre Festival hype and stick to delivering facts that are firmly rooted in reality.
• A willingness to serve. Even if you’re in it only for the money, unless you realize that you’re helping people you’re unlikely to ever be able to strike the right tone of communication that will make your marketing resonate with your audience. With searchers becoming ever more sophisticated in how they conduct their searches and ever better equipped to ignore the hype, look past ads and do their own research, being able to connect at a level that humanizes you is key to establishing the dialogue you need to attract your audience’s attention.

All these three are ‘soft’ skills. They are internal behaviors you need to establish and then manifest in way that corresponds to the external behaviors your target audience exhibits.

And that is truly all there is to it. I hope this helps.?