Humans are social animals. We’re very sensitive to how the people around us speak to us and treat us. It’s how we decide which relationships to keep and which to discard. That’s as true for brands and their customers as it is within families and local communities.
If we can signal to our customers that we understand that, value our relationship with them, and want to retain it, we stand much more chance of successfully doing so. But translating that into the world of marketing doesn’t just happen.
Creating powerful advocates
Our customer communications are our best opportunity to improve our business. But that doesn’t happen by just asking and doing what your customers tell you. Because we don’t know why we make the decisions we do. What is known is how the human brain works. It’s called behavioural science.
Our strategy for customer communication should be informed by studying and guiding positive behaviour and that means eliciting reactions. We have to design the actions that generate the behaviour that let us test the reactions. Sufu are experts in achieving this via:
- Designing comms to gather psychographic data
- Testing for evidence of common biases and preconceptions
- Creating gamification opportunities
- Building communities and collaborations
Reinforcing positive memories
The content we distribute, via social media, email, or other means,should act as a catalyst for positive conversation. Listening, being genuinely social, engaging and interacting with your audience. Not publishing, not broadcasting, not shouting into the digital echo chamber without caring what comes back.
Social platform algorithms goad us to post continuously and it is hard to keep up a constant stream of engaging and insightful content day in, day out. But what are we doing to our brands if we become dull, myopic or repetitive? We just turn our customers off and tempt them to mute or unfollow us.
At Sufu, we’re experts in finding what resonates emotionally, in exploring when and how it’s ok to be funny or serious, and giving your brand a full personality that people won’t tire, of across lots of different types of content.
For a deep dive, check out our guide to The behavioural science of video marketing and podcasting.