Marketing and Behavior-Change Mashup

The way that I see it, all businesses with a Web presence are participating in a behavior-change lifecycle. Whether they know it or not.

Just like teaching someone to quit smoking involves awareness of the benefits to a healthier lifestyle, so does your business require raising awareness among the market for its benefits and market value-proposition.

Creating Awareness Touchstones

Marketing is traditionally seen as the process of building a base and creating touchstones for contact. Through social media engagement, you can create awareness of your brand through consistency. Whether your platform-of-choice is Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google Plus, or some other flavor, they each offer the ability to connect with the untapped market.

By being consistent with your social media engagement, your audience can rely upon you. And, if your message is a value-proposition that resonates with your audience, customers will become more aware through consistency.

Your Trust Gauge

Your audience will reach a point where they will be ready to explore your product or service. At this time, you will have built trust through consistency with engagement in your social media platform. They will have increased confidence that you are able to deliver upon your value-proposition, because you’ve been reliable and consistent.

Through responding with your platform to current customers, you show care in the success of delivery of your product or service. If customers voice dissatisfaction, you want to let them know:

1. You hear them.
2. You care that there was a failure.
3. And, you will do whatever you can to help that customer achieve their needs and remedy the situation.

On the positive side, when customers voice satisfaction or gratification to you through your social media platform, encourage evangelism. Through Yelp, Google Local, or Yahoo reviews, Facebook Likes, or Twitter Recommendations. They can recommend or endorse you on LinkedIn, or provide a testimonial for your website.

Recognize and celebrate your happy customers. Make them feel good for having gone with your brand. Again, like helping someone quit smoking, you want to have them feel part of a successful community. Recommendations to friends and testimonials are not only beneficial to you, but also beneficial for your customers in fostering a growing successful community.

Inevitable Goal Tending

The resounding note that you want to leave with your social media platform is that you care about helping people achieve their goals, and not just in making a single-sale. You are encouraging behavior-change and fostering of a successful and happy community of customers.

By building your trust gauge through consistency and engagement with social media, you’re successfully nurturing a healthy marketing and customer lifecycle.