“Focus on Beliefs”
When you Want To Make a Big Behavioral Change in Your Market
Our standard marketing approach for instilling behavior change and attracting physicians to our brand’s products is terribly insufficient & more than often fails.
Marketing professionals and their executive panels could conclude that the reason behind this failure is they don’t have the right messages, or the campaign’s execution was somehow at fault, or their sales force did not implement the strategy correctly. I propose that, actually, none of these is at fault. The real cause for our inability to induce enduring behavior change in our physicians is that we did not understand the physicians’ beliefs, and we did not have a process for adjusting them.
What we have is a perception problem combined with a serious miscommunication problem.
The beliefs held by our physicians kept them deaf to our poorly targeted messaging, and they were unable to hear what we were telling them because our messages didn’t fit into their belief system. It’s our responsibility as marketing experts to help our physicians transition from their current beliefs to new beliefs, providing them with the tools and thus the ability to understand our companies’ products and benefits with new eyes, and to hear with clear ears. By changing their beliefs they have a new vision.
When we do this, our company’s products suddenly become visible because the minds of the physicians are suddenly capable of being receptive. We no longer speak the languages of Babel; instead, we have found a common language, the Rosetta Stone of aligned beliefs.
Focus on Beliefs
The more clearly you understand what your customer wants and needs, the more capably you’ll be able to provide the information your customers desire.
As always, the first puzzle to solve is identifying exactly who your customers are and what they value and believe. There’s absolutely no point offering a football player a hockey puck. It’s a mismatch and just as effective as offering a hamburger to a vegetarian.
