5 marketing tips to encourage behaviour change

I have been challenged with the task of writing a Westco whitepaper on the topic of social media and using it more effectively to encourage behaviour change. I will be writing this whitepaper in partnership with Digital Officer at Sutton Council Nick Dovey.

As we all know LG Comms has come and gone and it was a useful opportunity for me to get up to speed and begin thinking about the content of my whitepaper. In this blog post I highlight some of my key findings...

One of the key takeaways from the conference was the emphasis on building trust with your customer. Once the customer trusts you, they will listen to you and change their behaviour accordingly. So how do we build trust with the customer? Here are some of my learnings:

1. Be specific – Ensure your content is targeted to a specific audience. For me, this without doubt was the key point from the conference. Once your content is better aligned with a key audience in mind it will significantly help in regards to engagement. The short answer to achieving this is to use internal brainstorming sessions within your team to craft better ideas, and make a bigger effort to include those ideas in your ROSIE strategy.
2. Use data creatively – Trust is built not from what you say but from what you have achieved. Highlight your outcomes (i.e. your analysed data from consultations) to gain trust. Package up your data in a more engaging format, such as an infograph and present it to your audience. 
3. Collaborate with your audience – Remember your job is to help your audience and not just speak to them. The key to engagement is to help your audience blossom, which may involve supporting them just as much as communicating with them. 
4. Be ethical – Focus your content on moral issues to help make your brand appear more trust worthy. This also involves displaying values of honesty and transparency. 
5. Go digital – Emphasize that they can now engage with services digitally, which is a much more efficient and modern way for residents to engage with local government.

What do you think? Do you agree with the points above? Is there one point that you think is more important? And are their other points that I may have missed? I’d love to read your comments!