April 1, 2013
BrainTrust Query: From Mind Marketing to Behavior Marketing
Through a special arrangement, presented here for discussion is an excerpt of an article from the Joel Rubinson on Marketing Research blog.
What might advertising look like by 2020? In a nutshell, marketing will transform from being a battle for the mind to becoming a battle for behaviors.
In traditional marketing, we ran mass advertising, targeted based on demos (product demonstrations to consumers) that was intended to change people’s attitudes about a brand. We measured effectiveness via survey techniques, like copy testing and brand trackers with attribute ratings. We hoped affecting the mind would result in increased sales behavior, but it often had little direct connection.
In digital, social and mobile, people can do things with media — sharing links, liking or following a brand, commenting in Twitter or in a forum, taking a picture in Pinterest, searching to find out more and visiting brand.com websites. Add to the list downloading branded apps, Shazaming a TV commercial, scanning a QR code and who knows what else a few months from now?
And media targeting is increasingly based on behaviors. Search is obviously behavior-based, but so is paid advertising in Facebook based on people’s liking and friending behaviors.
Behavioral marketing can also build brand audiences. A brand like Starbucks, with nearly 35 million Facebook fans, can generate 100 million earned impressions or more each and every month — all with no additional media cost.
However, perhaps the biggest sea change in behavior marketing has yet to occur — the rise of mobile marketing that brings digital marketing right to the point of purchase. It is the convergence of advertising and shopper path to purchase where a marketer will be able to deliver the right message, at exactly the right time and place, to shoppers who that brand has a relationship with but who split their purchases among other brands as well.
To equip your organization for behavior marketing, here are five cornerstones:
Build interactivity into your brand communications creative. TV advertising should encourage digital and second screen behaviors. Facebook stories should encourage return to the fan page, etc.
- Build brand audiences so you have an annuity from your marketing investments. Encourage people to like and follow your brand, sign up for e-mails, and to download branded apps.
- Create media targeting strategies that are based on behavior first and only use demos as a last resort for more scale.
- Master mobile. Mobile is likely to account for 10-20 percent of your total ad spend by 2020.
- Build an insights and brand-tracking strategy that converts digital and social behaviors into brand KPI metrics.
Paid advertising will change in fundamental ways in our digital, social, and mobile future. And the way we researchers measure advertising effectiveness and brand progress must also change, becoming more native to our digital lives.
BrainTrust
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Discussion Questions
How should marketers be preparing for the ongoing shift from mass to behavioral marketing? What would you add to the suggestions mentioned in the article?
Poll
It is interesting that this discussion follows Friday’s discussion “Grow your marketing credibility before it’s too late.” Marketers hoping that their marketing activity will increase sales are exactly why many CMOs have a credibility issue.
Marketing scientists, now being coined “data scientists,” have been making the connection between marketing efforts and behaviors for many decades. Mr. Rubinson is correct in that marketing is about impacting behavior that drives sales and the ability to measure that impact.
As we’ve seen in the history of wars the US has been involved in, sometimes you find yourself in an environment where you just plain and simple can’t win, no matter how many resources you throw at it.
Have marketers ended up at the same place when it comes to the ‘battle for the human mind’? With all of our analysis are the workings of the mind too far beyond our comprehension? So we abandon that battle and now go to what we can actually see—human behavior. And here we go again. This should be a snap.
But what determines human behavior? Roughly 95% of it is controlled by the sub-conscious mind. The sub-conscious of course is even more difficult to access than the conscious mind. We know it’s been programmed by all kinds of factors, almost all of which happened in our earliest years. And ‘that’ takes us to what people believe. Maybe we need to study the role of BELIEF in the marketplace. Personally in my work I’ve moved from “What is measured gets done” to “What is believed gets done.” Understand belief and you understand behavior.
We are SO desperate to make people predictable and controllable! But oh the human heart…who can know it?
There won’t be lots of difference in 2020 from today, except that we’ll want more action. Own the mind, make a behavior happen, measure, and start again. What we are missing here is the reality of what the new “Gen x+y-Millennial” or whatever title they are given in 2020 will be like. It is an unknown—do not even try to guess. The groups we are marketing to right now, based on product category, are changing so fast that hitting the mark and creating a behavior with them is like Wiley coyote catching the Road Runner with his one of his traps.
NYT said it well this weekend: “The television screen, once perceived by adults as the gravest threat to the brains of their offspring, has been miniaturized, replicated and made even more addictively distracting: according to a 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation report, children age 8 to 18 spent 77 minutes more per day with entertainment media than they did 5 years earlier. Pressure is more intense than ever to land a spot in an elite college and, in certain socioeconomic strata, in the nursery school that is a fast track to one.” http://nyti.ms/YQigP9
So the key to 2020 marketing is very much about behavior but also about being ready to change fast and adapt as a marketer.
I am so glad I am not a kid today.
You argue for behaviors, but then fall back on the age-old term “impressions.” Yet, we still can’t link impressions to behaviors. Clearly, we need new tools. Is neuromarketing, that is, understanding how the consumer’s mind works, the answer?
Shift to behavioral marketing? This has been in practice for several decades. Consumer research and U&A is all about consumer behavior.
I would encourage anyone practicing marketing based on “demos (product demonstrations to consumers)” to first catch up to the 1980s, and then rush to catch up to 2010s.
Joel makes a clear case for a shift to more behavior-based marketing. This is not really a new concept, but it is more feasible in today’s world.
It is certainly true in terms of targeting. The very traditional agency approach of demographic targeting (Women 18-34) is rapidly being usurped by more behavior driven models (target frequent buyers of the product regardless of age).
The objectives of any good marketing program today should be to influence the consumer along the path to purchase. This may still be attitudinal, supporting a brand image. But today, it may be more behavioral. It could relate to pre-shopping behavior, such as store choice or trip planning; actual shopping behavior including product selection, brand choice, coupons and promotions; or post-shopping behavior such as shopping experience posts on social media.
The key enabler of this approach is the advent of Big Data which captures consumer behavior at levels never before available. Recall the old adage that you “can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Well, now you can market to shift behavior because you can actually measure the impact.
This shift from mass marketing to purchase-focused marketing began about 31 years ago, with the first modern loyalty program, AAdvantage by American Airlines. The channels (i.e., the digital ones) are new but the principles are very much built on the same foundation: marketing based on how customers behave and purchase is more effective than mass marketing, and by a wide margin.
“Likes” are useful to a point—researchers can distinguish political party 85% of the time and race 95% of the time.
But behavioral marketing that relies on likes and shares is incomplete. Marketers need the most valuable behaviors—past purchases.
Today there’s a land grab that’s spawning a marketplace of purchase history, both in-house and leased. This has opened new frontiers for analytics companies like First Data and Datalogix and has created an in-house advantage for large retailers like Amazon.com and Target.
With the increasing demand for purchase behavior, marketers will need to avoid pitfalls. These include:
1. Don’t spook visitors wary of sharing personal data. Online publishers need to provide an prominent, easy opt-out.
2. Recognize which categories fit best. For example, high involvement, high repeat purchase categories like consumer foods work better.
3. Avoid wear out. Certain customers such as those in the market for autos will become inundated and annoyed. Publishers need disciplined frequency caps at the brand and even category level.
This is the first few paragraphs from my own submission to the “Advertising 2020” program from Wharton’s Future of Advertising initiative. The full document is here, with links to lots more perspectives from 170+ marketers around the world—including Joel.
Beginning 100 years ago, self-service swept through retailing with huge benefits to shoppers, retailers and their brand suppliers. With shoppers selling to themselves in the stores, en mass, the role of brands in the sales process withdrew, largely, from the stores, and retreated to mass media. Retailers’, as merchant warehousemen mostly played a logistics role: building stores, filling and refilling them with merchandise that the shoppers removed, managing stores and their massive cash intake, mostly at low margins. These low margins were made possible, partially, by sharing in their suppliers’ margins through selling them “advertising,” both in-store as well as by cooperatively distributing weekly circulars to shoppers at their homes.
The net result of all this was that personal selling skills largely vanished from self-service retail, the CPG/FMCG, non high-end type of retailing. However, those “personal” selling skills were re-introduced to self-service retail in online stores, Amazon in the van. The proper paradigm for judging the advent of online retail is NOT the electronic store vs. bricks-and-mortar—those are simply logistics considerations. The proper paradigm is active selling in a quasi-personal manner, vs. passive selling, really non-selling for the brand or retailer, in the self-service world. This perspective is absolutely essential to understanding the revolution in bricks retailing that is occurring before our eyes.
In the sense discussed here, the pre-self-service retailing involved mediated sales, where the proprietor or clerk mediated-assisted-expedited the sales in the store. In contrast, self-service retail is largely unmediated. For online sales, the most effective selling is digitally mediated sales, where knowledge of the shopper, and of the merchandise is used to algorithmically assist-expedite bringing the shopper to a decision, and closing the sale.
For the personal salesman, the focus must always and ever be on the close of the sale, moving the mind of the customer to meet the mind of the seller, and sealing the transaction/securing payment. The widespread ignorance of closing and the sales process among retailers and their suppliers is a natural consequence of the unmediated nature of self-service. One hundred years of incredible success and benefits do not prompt a lot of introspection. Nor do the very relevant skills developed serving shoppers who are selling themselves, serve well when facing competition with the far advanced personal selling skills, as exhibited by Amazon.
My addition to the list would be to re-examine the Porter’s Value Chain approach to creating new items, marketing existing items, and improving existing items. As helpful and productive as it is (and has served our industry well), it is no longer sufficient to meet the behavioral side of the shopper’s longings. The manufacturer (or distributor/retailer) is not in control of the messaging (and therefore, cannot “dictate” what the shopper/consumer SHOULD want or need). What is needed is a refined understanding of the shopper JOBS to be completed (it is different than the wants/needs that so many CPG firms use to build product). Then, creating the right “touchpoints” to accomplish the job requirements (and it is NOT product feature-based).
By better understanding the shopper jobs and building the interactions around that; the marketer can greatly enhance their success and be better grounded in adhering to the REAL behaviorally important actions (purchasing).
Arguably, we are in a battle for behavior…Right Now. I don’t believe that by 2020, we will still be incenting behavior as vigorously as we are now.
Instead, the next 7 – 10 years will see a quantum leap in the sheer volume of information coming our way, and how data is served up.
One of the most important changes to marketing will be the use of Artificial Intelligence. AI will be used on the marketer’s side to reach shoppers the way a smart bomb seeks targets and delivers payloads. On the other side of the equation, shoppers will use AI to filter and select messages, offers and information.
The shift has been happening literally for decades. The pace of change is accelerating due to the consumer adoption of technologies and the rise and fall of “fad” channels like, tablets, social outlets, etc.
All of the tactics mentioned are good, old “blocking and tackling” when it comes to building your brand. I think the future will come, and shoppers will have new technologies and new channels to leverage them. Beyond that, It is difficult at best to try to guess the future at this point.
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It is interesting that this discussion follows Friday’s discussion “Grow your marketing credibility before it’s too late.” Marketers hoping that their marketing activity will increase sales are exactly why many CMOs have a credibility issue.
Marketing scientists, now being coined “data scientists,” have been making the connection between marketing efforts and behaviors for many decades. Mr. Rubinson is correct in that marketing is about impacting behavior that drives sales and the ability to measure that impact.
As we’ve seen in the history of wars the US has been involved in, sometimes you find yourself in an environment where you just plain and simple can’t win, no matter how many resources you throw at it.
Have marketers ended up at the same place when it comes to the ‘battle for the human mind’? With all of our analysis are the workings of the mind too far beyond our comprehension? So we abandon that battle and now go to what we can actually see—human behavior. And here we go again. This should be a snap.
But what determines human behavior? Roughly 95% of it is controlled by the sub-conscious mind. The sub-conscious of course is even more difficult to access than the conscious mind. We know it’s been programmed by all kinds of factors, almost all of which happened in our earliest years. And ‘that’ takes us to what people believe. Maybe we need to study the role of BELIEF in the marketplace. Personally in my work I’ve moved from “What is measured gets done” to “What is believed gets done.” Understand belief and you understand behavior.
We are SO desperate to make people predictable and controllable! But oh the human heart…who can know it?
There won’t be lots of difference in 2020 from today, except that we’ll want more action. Own the mind, make a behavior happen, measure, and start again. What we are missing here is the reality of what the new “Gen x+y-Millennial” or whatever title they are given in 2020 will be like. It is an unknown—do not even try to guess. The groups we are marketing to right now, based on product category, are changing so fast that hitting the mark and creating a behavior with them is like Wiley coyote catching the Road Runner with his one of his traps.
NYT said it well this weekend: “The television screen, once perceived by adults as the gravest threat to the brains of their offspring, has been miniaturized, replicated and made even more addictively distracting: according to a 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation report, children age 8 to 18 spent 77 minutes more per day with entertainment media than they did 5 years earlier. Pressure is more intense than ever to land a spot in an elite college and, in certain socioeconomic strata, in the nursery school that is a fast track to one.” http://nyti.ms/YQigP9
So the key to 2020 marketing is very much about behavior but also about being ready to change fast and adapt as a marketer.
I am so glad I am not a kid today.
You argue for behaviors, but then fall back on the age-old term “impressions.” Yet, we still can’t link impressions to behaviors. Clearly, we need new tools. Is neuromarketing, that is, understanding how the consumer’s mind works, the answer?
Shift to behavioral marketing? This has been in practice for several decades. Consumer research and U&A is all about consumer behavior.
I would encourage anyone practicing marketing based on “demos (product demonstrations to consumers)” to first catch up to the 1980s, and then rush to catch up to 2010s.
Joel makes a clear case for a shift to more behavior-based marketing. This is not really a new concept, but it is more feasible in today’s world.
It is certainly true in terms of targeting. The very traditional agency approach of demographic targeting (Women 18-34) is rapidly being usurped by more behavior driven models (target frequent buyers of the product regardless of age).
The objectives of any good marketing program today should be to influence the consumer along the path to purchase. This may still be attitudinal, supporting a brand image. But today, it may be more behavioral. It could relate to pre-shopping behavior, such as store choice or trip planning; actual shopping behavior including product selection, brand choice, coupons and promotions; or post-shopping behavior such as shopping experience posts on social media.
The key enabler of this approach is the advent of Big Data which captures consumer behavior at levels never before available. Recall the old adage that you “can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Well, now you can market to shift behavior because you can actually measure the impact.
This shift from mass marketing to purchase-focused marketing began about 31 years ago, with the first modern loyalty program, AAdvantage by American Airlines. The channels (i.e., the digital ones) are new but the principles are very much built on the same foundation: marketing based on how customers behave and purchase is more effective than mass marketing, and by a wide margin.
“Likes” are useful to a point—researchers can distinguish political party 85% of the time and race 95% of the time.
But behavioral marketing that relies on likes and shares is incomplete. Marketers need the most valuable behaviors—past purchases.
Today there’s a land grab that’s spawning a marketplace of purchase history, both in-house and leased. This has opened new frontiers for analytics companies like First Data and Datalogix and has created an in-house advantage for large retailers like Amazon.com and Target.
With the increasing demand for purchase behavior, marketers will need to avoid pitfalls. These include:
1. Don’t spook visitors wary of sharing personal data. Online publishers need to provide an prominent, easy opt-out.
2. Recognize which categories fit best. For example, high involvement, high repeat purchase categories like consumer foods work better.
3. Avoid wear out. Certain customers such as those in the market for autos will become inundated and annoyed. Publishers need disciplined frequency caps at the brand and even category level.
This is the first few paragraphs from my own submission to the “Advertising 2020” program from Wharton’s Future of Advertising initiative. The full document is here, with links to lots more perspectives from 170+ marketers around the world—including Joel.
Beginning 100 years ago, self-service swept through retailing with huge benefits to shoppers, retailers and their brand suppliers. With shoppers selling to themselves in the stores, en mass, the role of brands in the sales process withdrew, largely, from the stores, and retreated to mass media. Retailers’, as merchant warehousemen mostly played a logistics role: building stores, filling and refilling them with merchandise that the shoppers removed, managing stores and their massive cash intake, mostly at low margins. These low margins were made possible, partially, by sharing in their suppliers’ margins through selling them “advertising,” both in-store as well as by cooperatively distributing weekly circulars to shoppers at their homes.
The net result of all this was that personal selling skills largely vanished from self-service retail, the CPG/FMCG, non high-end type of retailing. However, those “personal” selling skills were re-introduced to self-service retail in online stores, Amazon in the van. The proper paradigm for judging the advent of online retail is NOT the electronic store vs. bricks-and-mortar—those are simply logistics considerations. The proper paradigm is active selling in a quasi-personal manner, vs. passive selling, really non-selling for the brand or retailer, in the self-service world. This perspective is absolutely essential to understanding the revolution in bricks retailing that is occurring before our eyes.
In the sense discussed here, the pre-self-service retailing involved mediated sales, where the proprietor or clerk mediated-assisted-expedited the sales in the store. In contrast, self-service retail is largely unmediated. For online sales, the most effective selling is digitally mediated sales, where knowledge of the shopper, and of the merchandise is used to algorithmically assist-expedite bringing the shopper to a decision, and closing the sale.
For the personal salesman, the focus must always and ever be on the close of the sale, moving the mind of the customer to meet the mind of the seller, and sealing the transaction/securing payment. The widespread ignorance of closing and the sales process among retailers and their suppliers is a natural consequence of the unmediated nature of self-service. One hundred years of incredible success and benefits do not prompt a lot of introspection. Nor do the very relevant skills developed serving shoppers who are selling themselves, serve well when facing competition with the far advanced personal selling skills, as exhibited by Amazon.
My addition to the list would be to re-examine the Porter’s Value Chain approach to creating new items, marketing existing items, and improving existing items. As helpful and productive as it is (and has served our industry well), it is no longer sufficient to meet the behavioral side of the shopper’s longings. The manufacturer (or distributor/retailer) is not in control of the messaging (and therefore, cannot “dictate” what the shopper/consumer SHOULD want or need). What is needed is a refined understanding of the shopper JOBS to be completed (it is different than the wants/needs that so many CPG firms use to build product). Then, creating the right “touchpoints” to accomplish the job requirements (and it is NOT product feature-based).
By better understanding the shopper jobs and building the interactions around that; the marketer can greatly enhance their success and be better grounded in adhering to the REAL behaviorally important actions (purchasing).
Arguably, we are in a battle for behavior…Right Now. I don’t believe that by 2020, we will still be incenting behavior as vigorously as we are now.
Instead, the next 7 – 10 years will see a quantum leap in the sheer volume of information coming our way, and how data is served up.
One of the most important changes to marketing will be the use of Artificial Intelligence. AI will be used on the marketer’s side to reach shoppers the way a smart bomb seeks targets and delivers payloads. On the other side of the equation, shoppers will use AI to filter and select messages, offers and information.
The shift has been happening literally for decades. The pace of change is accelerating due to the consumer adoption of technologies and the rise and fall of “fad” channels like, tablets, social outlets, etc.
All of the tactics mentioned are good, old “blocking and tackling” when it comes to building your brand. I think the future will come, and shoppers will have new technologies and new channels to leverage them. Beyond that, It is difficult at best to try to guess the future at this point.