Why Your Message Isn't Sticking: How to Shift Behaviors with Strategic Marketing

Here’s a fun fact for you: being a brand that talks louder than your competitors isn’t how you get new customers. Instead, your brand should focus on changing behaviors through strategic marketing.

That may sound intimidating but the good news for you is that you have the power to change future customer’s habits through your content, messaging, and promotions. But before we get started on the who, what, why of  behavior-shifting marketing, let’s talk about the customer:

• The average customer retention rate across all industries is over 75%

•  77% of consumers say they've remained loyal to a specific brand for 10 years or more

• Customers with an emotional relationship with a brand have a 306% higher lifetime value

• 57% of consumers spend more on brands or providers to which they are loyal

• Three in four consumers consider trust pivotal in their choice of stores. 

• Price is the number one factor keeping customers loyal to their favorite brands. 

• 88% of consumers say it takes three or more purchases to build brand loyalty. 

As you can tell from the numbers, habits, loyalty, and trust have a lot to do customer spending behavior. Now that you’ve seen the facts about how customers interact with brands, let’s get into your audience’s habits (and how you can break them).

Understanding Your Audience’s Habits (and how to break them) 

A hard truth you may not want to hear? Habits are difficult to break. Humans are creatures of routine and habit, and once we find something that works for us we stick with it, even if there’s something better out there. 

Your customers experience the same unintentional loyalty, whether it be grabbing the same latte from the same coffee shop every morning, hitting up the same grocery store on the same corner every Wednesday, or taking the same route to work day in and day out. I bet you can name a few of your own habits, too.

We have to reframe our mindset to understand this simple premise: it might be totally irrelevant that your product performs better, is higher quality, or even priced more competitively. The truth is, customers might be too fixated on another brand to even notice you.

This audience can’t hear you OR see you, meaning the challenge isn’t JUST capturing your competitor's customer’s attention; it’s breaking those ingrained habits and behaviors. Let’s be real: that takes a little more than just a few blogs or social media posts.

Changing behavior takes a strategic approach that reshapes how your audience thinks and acts so they can start hearing and seeing you. 

Your next question is probably, “but how?” Keep reading to find out.

You Can Shift Customer Behavior through Strategic Marketing and Promotions

You made it to the “but how” section of the blog. Hats off to you! If you’re here, you are probably wondering how to change the way your audience behaves.

Our answer? Behavior-shifting marketing and promotions.

These are more than just your average social media posts, sales, discounts, or advertisements. Behavior-shifting marketing campaigns are designed to interrupt customers' routines, challenge their habits, and offer a compelling reason to try something new. Think of it like nudging someone out of their comfort zone, but in a beneficial and exciting way.

Here are a few steps you can take to start shifting future customer behavior:

• Interrupt their routine. Customers stick to what they know because it’s familiar. You can focus on a unique experience or a limited-time offer that requires immediate action or “appointment behavior”. This can be enough to create a pause in their routine and have them give you a second look. A perfect example of this in retail is a fall style show, where you dress friendly faces in items that are a part of the apparel line’s color story that may be a bit outside of your customer’s usual style. They love it on someone else, and become tempted to try it themselves because it is a fun environment where they came ready to buy.

• Challenge their habits through content and messaging. It’s not enough to just introduce your product; you have to show them why it’s worth breaking the habit they’ve formed with your competitor. The goal is to eliminate any hesitation about trying something new. A good example of this is comparative ads or educational reels. These opportunities demonstrate expertise and guidance.

• Create emotional connections. Remember our last post about using storytelling in your marketing to connect with your audience? Storytelling is a great way to illicit an emotional response, because behavior-shifting marketing isn’t just logical, it’s emotional. People are more likely to break a habit if they feel they’ll miss out on something valuable or be part of something exclusive. When a brand tells its story well, their feed is far more developed with real people, photos, and places with less demand for selling a customer something. It’s real. 

By now, you’re probably a pro at understanding your audience and knowing that shifting their behavior requires strategic marketing, but that is not where the story (or this blog) ends. If you want a new habit or behavior to stick, you have to offer encouragement. And believe it or not, you can encourage your new customer behavior and we’re going to show you how!

Encouraging New Customer Behavior 

You’ve successfully created behavior-shifting strategies and have sparked customer interest in your brand. But how do you ensure that this new customer behavior sticks? Encouraging and reinforcing habit change is just as crucial as initiating it! Getting customers to break old habits is one thing, but making sure their loyalty has switched to you is where the real magic happens.

Here’s how to encourage new customer behavior with your content and messaging:

• Be clear on the habits you want customers to break. Identify these habitual behaviors and seek to disrupt the norm. Their morning coffee stop may be best interrupted with double rewards points for new members and continued rewards if they stop more frequently (think Starbucks Star Rewards).

• Make it easy for customers to switch. Paint a picture of what it’s like to do business with you or use your product. Focus on solving real pain points that future customers might not even realize they have. This is where tools like automation play great roles: sending emails explaining a how-to, having a sales team member who follows up with a call or text, or even a direct mail piece thanking them for their visit.

• Keep using emotional triggers in your messaging. People are more likely to break habits when there is an emotional driver behind the decision. Wellness product companies are great at this… they continue to provide great storytelling on success if you stick with their product or program.

• Reinforce with consistent, engaging content. You need to know that behavior change is a gradual process, so your content strategy needs to keep reinforcing the benefits of choosing your brand. 

• Track and adjust your strategy. Measuring the impact of your efforts is crucial to know if the things you’re doing are actually working. 

By implementing these steps, you’ll inspire new customer behavior but reaffirm that their choice to switch was the right one. Changing habits takes time, but with the right promotions, emotional connections, and strategic adjustments, you can help your audience break free from old routines and embrace your brand as part of their new normal.

By focusing on behavior-shifting promotions, engaging content, and strategic adjustments, you can break through the noise and make sure your message not only gets heard, but drives action.

Ready to change the conversation with your audience? Reach out to us at Stilwell + Co today to start planning your next behavior-shifting campaign!