Is Your Marketing Going to Change Behaviour?

Marketing thinking often sits within a business. The strategy revolves around the product, and not the person that you want to influence. The features and advantages dominate the benefits.

But central to successful marketing is behaviour and behavioural change. You want someone to do something differently. To buy from you and not a competitor. To use your service to improve their business performance. To enhance their products by using you as a supplier. So how are you trying to make this happen?

I have been reading. I am trying to get a better understanding of the brain and how it works, and central to everything that makes us human is communication. The Big Picture by Sean Carroll goes further into the science of the universe than I can understand, but his explanation of how ideas are generated is excellent. He seems to have a brain the size of a house and connects science with philosophy and it makes sense. My interest was in his explanation of language. How communication makes us human. How it all works.

How to Create a Mind by Ray Kurzweil, one of today's most influential futurists, opened up talking about how our brain is still the most amazing and intricate piece of machinery in the universe. The workings are all about communication, from neuron to neuron by an electrical charge, prompted within milliseconds by what we see, hear, smell or feel.

When you apply this science to marketing, you begin to understand that we are trying to communicate in a manner that creates memories and responses within the brain. We want our messages to connect with the data that is already logged in the mind. We create an immediate response.

Try this.

Mars Bar.

How long did it take for your brain to produce an image or a memory? Did you categorise the brand name in chocolate, or did it produce a negative reaction if you are trying to cut out sugar? Did the phrase "A Mars a Day Helps You Work Rest and Play" spring into anyone's mind? Neurons, all sparked by me writing those two words. And Ray goes into even more detail about how we recognise the letters that make up the words. And then, I'll admit, it got a bit tricky for my generally unscientific mind to keep up.

So from the first thing in the morning when you open the curtains you are communicating. You see the weather, and you are already thinking about what you will wear, also linking to where you are going that day and what you need to do.

So back to marketing. You want people to respond to your marketing in a positive manner. To put you on the list for potential purchase. To have you placed in among the neurons in their brain. You want them to have your brand in their heads like you have Mars.

To do this in the current information age needs more planning than was needed in the past. The media landscape is more complicated and people are seeing more and more messages, every day. The old days of producing an ad and sending it out on TV are gone. That used to change behaviour by making brands more visible and memorable. People shop differently now, they are less brand-driven and will research and make choices based on multiple engagements. Their media consumption includes TV, radio, and some press. Their online activity is shopping, social, news and then off they go to YouTube, Netflix and Amazon. Disney and Facebook are soon going to be playing the content game along with Apple.

Let's take a minute and go back to the customer. That one person. They see your promotional material, and then what? Where did they see it? Online? Did they click? Did they even stop to look at it properly? Did you get some neurons firing? And then what? Have they moved on to another piece of content? How long did you keep their attention? Have they registered any interest in their thought process? Or if they saw you on TV or heard you on the radio, are they going to find you online?

What do you want to get from your own media consumption? Are you there to see and engage with advertising? Probably not. Ok, definitely not. So what do you like? Content that reflects your interests, about topics that you enjoy, written well. You are happy to click to another piece of information that will keep your interest. Are you going to read or watch videos from companies or brands that simply want you to know more about them? Who haven't bothered to think about how valuable your time is? Or would you like them to think that you care about what they get out of the relationship?

The best press ad I ever wrote (or my favourite at least) was for Unibol Software. "When I bought Unibol Software, my golf handicap went from 12 to 8!". The software let the customer relax, gave him more time to practise and play, and made him happy.

So when you start to plan your marketing, begin by thinking about your customer, and what they get out of engaging with you, it will put you on the same page as them, and give those brain cells something to remember.