Operant Marketing

by Aaron Shields
About this author

The purpose of business hasn’t changed since your company started and it’s never going to change; in Peter Drucker’s words, “There is only one valid definition of business purpose: to create a customer.” And, at some point in the past, you developed a marketing strategy to create customers, and your marketing tactics worked well and they became standard practice.

Even though business purpose hasn’t changed, the business environment has; and, you’ve probably realized it. In 2006, Verizon’s Chief Marketing Office, John Stratton, lashed out against marketing agencies: “Your clients are in trouble. They are looking to you to save them. The ad inventory that has been sold for the last 50 years no longer works, and marketers have started to figure that out. In the process, your clients will fire, hire, fire and hire agency after agency… seeking someone—anyone—who can help them perhaps on where to go next … Last year I spent well over a billion dollars buying space, time, air, hits and clicks across a multitude of mediums … So if you’ve been selling me this stuff, you probably need to know that I’m not perfectly happy. And I’m not alone.”

You’ve recognized that the environment has changed, but when was the last time you changed your marketing strategy? When was the last time you even considered changing your marketing strategy?

I don’t mean small year-to-year changes; I mean changing your whole approach.

Chances are you probably haven’t, and you shouldn’t—your brain isn’t wired to make the change: since your marketing strategy worked at some point, it became a learned behavior—you unknowingly engaged in operant conditioning.

Operant conditioning is a type of learning wherein you learn voluntary behavior based on the presentation or removal of positive or aversive stimuli. If your marketing tactics, your voluntary behavior, worked continually in the past you consistently received a positive stimulus—profits, increased awareness, etc. Through this positive reinforcement you learned to engage in the same behavior and expect the same results. And, that probably happened for years if not decades.

You’re tactics are probably still getting some “results,” but they’re not as effective as they were. But, since you have been conditioned to engage in the same behavior, knowing that you’ll get some results is better than not knowing if you’ll get any. If a rat learns to push a lever and get food every time, but suddenly he only gets food every other time he pushes the lever, he’s still going to push the lever even though the positive nature of the response has been halved.

Change is hard; it’s scary. It’s the path less trodden. But, eventually when the effectiveness of your strategy gets too low—if the rat only gets food every 100 times he pushes the lever—you’re going to be forced to change. And realistically, is this day that far in the future?

So maybe now is the time to play the “If” game: if you had to change everything about your marketing strategy, what would you do?

While you’re playing, it may be helpful to keep some other sagacious words from Drucker in mind to guide your new marketing strategy: “The aim of marketing is to make selling superfluous. The aim of marketing is to know and understand the customer so well that the product or service fits him and sells itself. Ideally, marketing should result in a customer who is ready to buy.”

Stand up, take a deep breath, say goodbye to your lever, and go play.