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Nutritionalmarketing.com Weekly Newsletter Update
- Marketing Ideas, Information and Tips Nutritional Retailers Want
and Need!!
Volume 3, Issue
#40 - October 3, 2002
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In this issue:
Marketing is behavior modification
The psychology of change!
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Marketing is behavior
modification
I’ve written several
times this year about marketing and human behavior and as I think more
about it, I see a very clear correlation between the two. Marketing,
very simply, is designed to modify human behavior.
Let’s say you want
prospective customers to stop going to your competitors and start coming
to you for help with their health and nutritional needs. That requires
behavior modification that’s achieved through marketing.
This example may
sound simplistic, but it’s actually very important to many nutritional
retailers. During tough economic times, I’m often asked what I would
do to get people to buy more of my products or use more of my services.
The answer is that you need to make it easy for people to change their
current behavior. And not just easy but simple, too. If the change
you desire is not easy , people won’t do it or they will at least resist.
Think of how many people try to lose weight. If they took a simple
approach - walk a little and eat less - they might have more success.
Those are simple, easy things to do for most people.
Start with a behavior
that’s easy to change. For example, it could be a behavior that has
very little resistance. FYI - asking people to part with a sizeable
chunk of their money has a high level of resistance. Encouraging them
to attend a FREE seminar has much less resistance.
In marketing, we
often talk about creating barriers to change. These are ways to keep
the customers you have by making it harder for them to change. Many
times, the barrier isn’t real, it’s just a perception. It’s a barrier
in their mind and that’s all that matters.
The same is true
with changing behaviors. Sometimes, people don’t change their behavior
because of the perceived ease of doing business the way they currently
do it. Think about the last time you moved and all of the great businesses
you used to frequent. You don’t patronize them anymore because they’re
too "hard" to get to.
After selecting
the simple change you want people to make, you need to decide how you
will compensate them for making the change. You read that right. You
pay people to change. That’s promotion 101. Supermarkets offer coupons
for different brands of food, hoping that people will try them and change
their behavior.
So what can you
give a prospect to generate "trial" of your products and services?
Will it be enough to get them to climb that big change barrier?
I’m not saying you
should run ads in your local newspaper for $50 off , but people are
"trained" to expect compensation for making a change in their lives.
It happens from birth. When a parent wants a child to practice a new
behavior, rewards are sometimes offered. Do what I want you to do and
you will get TV, toys, etc. So how are you honoring that system that
we know so well?
For this week, I
will end with removing your prospects’ behavior chains. The easiest
way to break a relationship is to do it a little at a time. If you
put on a full-court press, you may get a reaction that’s the opposite
of what you want. People would rather fight than switch. The Grand
Canyon formed over thousands of years, a little bit at a time.
It takes a high
level of repetition over a long period of time to create new behaviors.
It’s often said that it takes 21 days to form a new habit and three
times that if you want it to become a life-long habit. What will you
do to get your prospects to see a new behavior that is better for them?
That new behavior is doing business with you!
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The psychology of
change!
Most of what it
takes to get people to try new things and make changes happens between
the ears and it’s not logical. Most decisions are made on a very emotional
level. So as you think of marketing as a tool you can use to change
behaviors, remember that the majority of what you are working with is
emotion. When you market, use an emotional approach that touches your
prospects in some way.
Also, in very turbulent
times like these it’s even harder to get people to make changes. They
often resist any change because they fear that what they’re moving toward
could end up being worse than what they already have. This leads to
stagnation.
You have a couple
of choices. You either make your marketing more emotional or you take
a very soft approach. Taking the more emotional approach can be very
rewarding. The challenge is that it can also deepen the paralysis.
The softer approach is more of a long-term strategy - when your prospects’
fear diminishes, they probably will think of you in a positive way and
be predisposed to your solutions.
Now is the time
that requires you as a marketer to think more, to visualize beyond mailers
or ads!
As always, have
fun with marketing!
Marty
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They need RespirActin!
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Quote
"Baseball is 90%
mental; the other half is physical"
Yogi Berra
I think the same
is true for behavioral changes and marketing. It’s often more mental
and psychological than we realize.
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Please note that
all of the marketing ideas that are mentioned in our enewsletter or
on our web site are designed to help you grow your business. As you
know one size does not fit all and some of the ideas may work better
for specific applications.
