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Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) recently hosted the webinar “Learning Audience Behavior to Drive Stronger Results.” Founder and owner of Wax Marketing Bonnie Harris led the webinar and presented on the use of integrated marketing communications (IMC) strategies to learn and influence customer behavior.
Harris began her presentation by bringing everyone up to speed on one cohesive definition of IMC: A planned use of different promotional methods that are relevant to the audience, consistent and reinforce each other. This definition encompasses what Harris believes to be the five critical components to understanding and influencing customer behavior:
1. Message alignment
2. Consistent creative
3. Cross-channel strategies
4. Measurement
5. Behavior analysis
The power within behavior analysis proved to be a main point in Harris’ presentation. She believes that a clear understanding of a customer’s behavior is the key to influencing his or her buying behavior cycle. Therefore, it is imperative for communicators and marketers to invest and personally partake in behavior analysis.
The four behavior analysis sources Harris shared were informal surveys, site analytics, social media analytics and observation. In accordance with behavior analysis, Harris reminded webinar attendees that all in all, content acquisition behavior is number one.
After explaining the importance of behavior analysis Harris shared where it fits into the four steps to influencing behavior, which include:
1. Create a powerful premise to guide your efforts
2. Analyze behavior
3. Target desired behavior
4. Create tactics to influence desired behavior
Harris concluded her presentation by explaining that tactics are used to target and influence desired behavior. Within her explanation she referenced the definition of IMC and reminded participants to increase performance efforts by linking tactics. Linking tactics is the heart of IMC and involves combining new and old methods, synchronizing efforts and aligning messages with the core of your business proposition.
Harris focused on four takeaways in her webinar:
- Identify your core strategy statement.
- Create your own custom survey.
- Create a linked tactic toolkit.
- Create two personas for your current campaign.
The “Learning Audience Behavior to Drive Stronger Results” webinar is a part of PRSA’s communication strategy presentation series and is available on demand until Nov. 12, 2016. The webinar is available to PRSA members for free; non-members may also gain access to the webinar for the full price of $200.