What Is Behavior Change Marketing?

Behavior change marketing delivers the social concepts that connect people to what you have or what you do. Although building awareness is still a crucial part of the equation, this process also promotes beneficial changes that can benefit individuals and their communities.

How can you create a successful behavior change marketing campaign? Each brand has unique challenges to consider, but these guiding principles reflect the actions to take when it’s time to embrace new growth strategies.

1. Empowerment and Responsibility

The most motivating messages that people hear sometimes form a challenge. When you see social marketing efforts, it’s often about telling people what they shouldn’t be doing. How many spots or ads have you seen that encourage people not to smoke cigarettes, drink alcohol in excess, or litter?

When you show people how they can take responsibility for their choices and grow from that experience, it can profoundly impact your brand.

2. Conversation Engagement

What’s the first thing you do when the best friend you haven’t seen in ten years shows up on your front door? You’d hug them, celebrate their presence, and have a conversation to catch up on things. Behavior change marketing takes that last concept seriously by encouraging people to feel like a company gets who they are and what they hope to accomplish.

Whether it’s sharing a status or speaking with someone at your company directly through social media or other platforms, each conversation creates more opportunities for closeness and loyalty. People want to work with brands they trust, and this effort is what helps to make that happen.

3. Creativity to Build Awareness

The average person can see over 3,000 different advertisements in 24 hours. When you’re exposed to that much information, anything that feels irrelevant gets immediately dismissed. When you implement behavior change marketing principles, you’re taking a non-traditional way to get noticed.

Instead of asking people to pay attention to what you’re offering, this process asks potential customers to look at ways to make their lives better. By adding value, you’re creating connections.

How we communicate with each other should make a difference in everyone’s lives. It’s an opportunity to create a lifelong impact that makes the world better. That’s why the goal of behavior change marketing is to create positive experiences with each interaction.

4. Celebrity Relationships

Do you have a favorite actor? Are you the first in line to see the next movie that comes out when they star in it? The fact that a casting agent decided to use that person in the film created a process that led to a behavior change if you wouldn’t see it with another celebrity fulfilling the role.

Celebrities have a unique pull in behavior change marketing. What the individual genuinely cares about is the message they convey to others, that passion transfers to others.

It doesn’t need to be someone from Hollywood to have this effect. If someone in your community is well-respected and seen as a leader, their promotion of your business and messaging can influence residents’ choices.

Behavior change marketing in public health (like what we at RGC have experience in) has a more niche focus for changing attitudes and habits to prevent a public health issue; such as disease, risk, and harm. The above can still apply, but make sure there is great care and sensitivity when creating messaging for these issues.

For assistance in reaching your target audience through effective marketing communications, email info@rigaudglobal.com to get started.