With the crowded digital market consumers face everyday, creating products and services that actually entice and make audience take action is extremely difficult. Influencing and changing customer behaviours need to be considered by businesses. Traditional advertising methods are often not enough these days to effectively overcome complex behavioural challenges.

So, throwing out the old, we get to the new four stages of behaviour design which can be used by brands to evaluate the behavioural effectiveness of the products and services their business offers.

1. How to grab attention

The very first thing that must be achieved is grabbing attention and answering the customers’ question of ‘why should I care?’ Even the very best product in the world will not sell if it does not get attention and portray its message clearly.

Make it interesting

Invite people in with attention grabbing aesthetics, engaging stories or enticing brand designs.

Create an emotional response

Craft marketing content that will stand out and become memorable by focusing on emotions. Consider options such as loss aversion and scarcity.

Be personal

Customers will respond positively to customised, personalised messages that are relevant to them, their values, behaviours and interests.

2. How to influence decisions

When you have your target audience engaged and interested, you must next provide a convincing, concise argument that will encourage them to take action.

Content

Provide content that is straightforward, clear and free from jargon. Be specific and simple in your brand messages and communications. Answer questions and help them to make their decisions.

Recommendations

When people are offered recommendations they are more likely to actually do something. Offer the next step, option or call to action in a concise manner.

Reframe

Your message can be used to alter perceptions and encourage a certain behaviour. Anchor people to a clear choice, entice them with scarcity and/or use social comparison and social proof to motivate.

Benefits

All customers want to be informed about what is in it for them – extrinsic rewards such as money or discounts, or intrinsic rewards such as appealing to their very values and motivations.

3. How to facilitate action

Once the decision has been made to act the next stage is to assist customers to follow through and convert by making the entire process as free from barriers and easy as possible.

Step-by-step

Break the actions of conversion down into small, easy achievable steps.

Guide

Shape their experience in a way that encourages action – call outs, predetermined defaults, and walkthrough guides to avoid any confusion.

A plan

Help customers to make a plan, to set goals and to commit to actions. Consider reminders and follow ups to keep them on track.

Triggers

Trigger customers to take action at the times that they are the most motivated and actually able to take action.

4. How to sustain behaviour

For many products and services a one-time action is not the end goal. Ongoing behaviour should be encouraged to build a relationship and provide a sense of progress over a period of time.

Relationships

Design for experiences that grow over time and will improve as customers learn more about the product and as the brand learns more about its customers.

Celebrate

Reward with positive feedback and provide evidence of progress. Think about a variable rewards schedule that can increase engagement and reinforce the behaviour change.

Intrinsic motivation

This is the ultimate driver of long-term behaviour change and when you provide a sense of purpose, social connection, self-expression, mastery, autonomy and status, people will be drawn to the product that provides this experience.

Brands need to consider the entire range of experiences that customers go through when utilising a product or service. When we understand the behaviours and motivations we can engage them. By using a behavioural design view, we can identify the stages in the customer’s journey, how it can be better and ensure marketing and brand designs are strengthened to limit the risk of your products or services being forgotten or worse, ignored by your target audience. To learn more about behavioural changes and branding design contact the Liquid Creativity team today.