The first step to solving any problem is to get everybody on the same page. In most companies, that’s easier said than done. Most projects have input from several departments with different agendas, and sometimes egos get in the way. Hunter & Bard developed a tool for working through these roadblocks based on our 20+ years of experience in leading strategy sessions and coaching our clients around the world. We call it the Behavior Engineering Canvas, and it’s our secret weapon for creating stellar marketing strategies our clients.
Our Behavioral Engineering Canvas is a tool to align the goals and objectives of multiple departments, and to define your firm’s target audience to understand them better. Using the core concepts of Behavioral Psychology, you’ll have a better grasp of what drives your customers to make the choices they make, and determine a hierarchy of what’s important to them. Let’s walk through the features of this tool to see what you’ll learn.
1. Define your target customer.
I’m sure your team has a general idea of who uses your product or service, but if they’re not in a Marketing or Sales capacity that information may not seem very relevant to their daily jobs. Nothing could be further from the truth! Once your team has a well-defined profile of your customer, it will influence every decision they make.
2. Clarify your end goals.
In the influential words of Stephen R. Covey, your team needs to begin with the end in mind. Until you gain consensus on the specific goals to accomplish, your team will not be equipped to make any strategic decisions.
3. Analyze your current status.
Once your team defines an end goal, take stock of the current state of your company. This process will help your team understand how many steps are required to accomplish your goals, and these steps will ultimately become your marketing strategy roadmap.
4. Spark creativity.
Populating the BEC requires a deep level of brainstorming and creativity. Taking a deep dive approach allows multiple stakeholders to share their opinions, and these ideas can grow into innovative solutions.
5. Uncover missed opportunities.
Viewing your company through the eyes of the consumer can often uncover potential target markets that were overlooked in the past. Allocating time to these cross-functional discussions also provides a 360-degree view of the problem.
6. Dissect current behaviors.
This section takes a candid look at the patterns currently exhibited by your customers, then defines what needs to happen instead for your team to achieve the defined goals.
7. Check their motivation.
Human behavior is predictable, and there’s a combination of logical and emotional factors that motivate customers towards action. This is further categorized into their primary and secondary motivations.
8. Sharpen your tools.
The behavioral tools section helps your team understand the implication of using each type of psychological trigger. Once they define the expected reaction for each scenario, it’s easy to select the tool that will have the greatest impact towards reaching their defined goals.
9. Build the roadmap.
Building your marketing strategy may sound overwhelming, but it’s simply the steps your team needs to take to move the needle. By going through this exercise, you’ll have a clear understanding of the gap between where you are and where you’d like to be. Then all that’s left is to define the tactics that will be most effective for your target audience.
10. Replicate the process.
After your team goes through this process once or twice, they’ll get the hang of looking at the project from all angles and will take less time to draw meaningful conclusions. Teams should repeat this process at any major milestones to ensure they’re on track.
Our Behavior Engineering Canvas is a great addition to your team’s annual strategy sessions or project kickoff meetings. It’s intended to spark heated discussions and uncover concepts that hadn’t been considered. Many clients like to print the form as a poster and allow their teams to use colored sticky notes to discuss their preferences. For a distributed team, this template is easy to share via Dropbox or Google drive to provide access to multiple contributors.
At Hunter & Bard, we’re fascinated with understanding your customer’s behaviors and motivations. We’d love to help your team fill out the Behavior Engineering Canvas and build the roadmap for successfully providing outstanding products and services to your key clients in 2016!