Want customers to change their behavior? Meet them where they're at!

Years ago, my team and I closed a really big manufacturing company.

And the challenge then became to get the employees of this company to start using the app.

So we came up with this great digital marketing strategy.

Email drip campaigns and push notifications and all of that.

And when we presented it to the head of HR, she took one look at it and she said,

"I'm sorry, this just isn't going to work for us."

"We're a factory. We make things. Most of our employees aren't sitting at their computers.

They're not using email on a regular basis.

Half of them don't even have smartphones."

It was a great lesson for me that the best way to reach my customers was not to start with what I knew, but to ask:

How can I go to them?

So we worked with this lady, and it turned out that the way they spoke to their employees most effectively was during their break times.

We created posters and flyers and slides that go up on the tvs in the break room, and we had her put them up.

And that turned out to be the most effective way to communicate with this particular population of people.

So the lesson here is, if we want to influence user behavior or drive some kind of engagement, it's important to throw out all of our previous biases and things that worked in the past.

Start with the question, where is my customer?

How can I reach them?

If we learn to speak their language, we have a much better shot at effectively engaging with them, communicating with them, and ultimately making them really happy.