Choose: Why do people choose your service?
After recognising there’s something they want to change and looked for potential options, the ‘choose’ stage is where someone makes that decision of which option to go for.
It’s not enough to just let people know you’re there, they need a reason to choose your service over their other options. All our ‘margareting’ work at this stage is about understanding how to help people make a confident choice.
So why should people choose your service?
The key questions I like to ask at this stage are:
What’s important to each of my customer groups?
What kinds of things will influence their choice?
Whose opinion do they trust?
a) What’s important to each of your customer groups?
From looking at the ‘know’ stage, you’ll have an understanding of who your customers are and what they’re looking for in a solution. That helps us to understand where people are starting from and how they’ll start to look for solutions, so that we can be there to make sure they find us.
But think about your own experiences of looking for a product or service - initially there might be a few key things you’re looking for, but when it comes to making the final choice we might be swayed by slightly different things, like which option is more convenient, more familiar, or the one a friend recommends.
An example of some innovative thinking for “place” - I once went to a pet first aid course that was held at a cat cafe!
So when I’m thinking about this stage, I find the ‘marketing mix’ helpful - you might be familiar with the 4Ps: Product, Place, Promotion, Price?
“Product” is what you’re offering (in our case it’ll be a service not a product, but 3Ps and an S isn't as catchy) and the best way to think about this is the benefit or value someone gets from using your service. The difference you make is the product. Is it what they’re looking for?
“Place” is how people get to your service, and it’s more than location. Your service doesn’t have to be something people go to in-person for this one to be relevant. Think about convenience and accessibility. Do people have to go out of their way, physically or metaphorically, to use your service?
“Promotion” is the one most people think of when we talk about ‘marketing’. It’s how people find out about your service, but also the impression they get, and how they understand what it offers and how to use it. Are people getting the impression that this service is the right choice for them?
“Price” is what people give up in exchange for your service. It doesn’t have to be money, and actually the biggest challenge in margareting can be recognising the ways that in return for our “free” service we ask people to be vulnerable, to accept help, to put their life in our hands, to face societal stigma, share secrets, that are more expensive than any amount of money we could charge. Is the ‘product’ you’re offering worth that price? If not, think about how you could reduce the price or increase the value you offer.
Tailoring each of these aspects of our service to what’s important to our users will help them make a confident choice.
b) What kinds of things will influence their choice?
You know how what you fancy for dinner depends on what’s going on that day? Like if it’s been a busy day and you’re tired, you might choose something easy to make. If it’s hot weather you might go for something light, or in winter there’s nothing better than a big bowl of stodge? And if it’s a special event we’ll want special food, we might have traditions around what we eat on different occasions in our culture, our religion or even just within our own family. If we’re having a tough time, we might be tempted by comfort food, sometimes if we’re unwell we might lose our appetite altogether… you get the jist - a choice as basic as “feel hungry, get food” can be influenced by all sorts of subjective things.
We like a dog-friendly cafe, but people with dog phobias or allergies don’t. It’s all about tailoring to your service users and offering options where you can.
So it can be helpful to talk to your service users about the situation they’re in, and what might affect their choices and behaviour around accessing support.
Often in community organisations people use our services because they need help with a difficult problem. They might be feeling quite stressed, and that does some interesting things to our brain. For one, it can take the job of decision-making away from the sensible, rational part of our brain that asks questions and thinks things through and gives that job to the lizard part of our brain that acts on instinct.
If that’s the case, the lizard might be looking for the safest, easiest, most convenient option - so if your service looks a bit confusing, or it’s tricky to get in touch, that might influence their choice.
I tend to find it’s not super easy to research this one - for two reasons:
Because it’s not always easy to find people who considered using the service and then chose not to - When I’ve worked in larger services that have been going a while I’ve met people in general community engagement work, or by reaching out very widely with my research, but it’s been trickier for smaller services. (If you’ve got the money, you can pay research agencies to find them for you, but if you manage to secure funding for that please get in touch and tell me all your secrets)
And because that the lizard part of our brain isn’t very open about its motivations, it takes skill to do this research well. We don’t always know what instinct drives our behaviour when we’re in that stressed headspace, and if we do we don’t always want to share it.
But a simple way to gather some clues at least is just talking to people who have used the service about why they chose it, what they remember about the other options they considered, and if there was anything about the service they hesitated over.
If you can use what you learn in the way you promote, it could help encourage people to choose your service.
For example, someone once told me they had hesitated about contacting the council-run service I was working in because they were behind on their council tax payments and worried we’d turn them away. Now we can’t exactly add “we have no idea what interactions you’ve had with other departments of the council and you’d be surprised how little we care, really!” to all our leaflets, but we could go out and promote the service with real human beings at events, so that folks could come and ask those kinds of questions.
c) Whose opinion do they trust?
Have you ever had a friend recommend a TV show or something to you, and you decide to give it a go even though it didn't look like your sort of thing?
We trust people that we know have similar taste or values. And getting a recommendation from someone we trust is especially helpful in situations where we might feel vulnerable, like when we're thinking about asking for help from a community organisation. If they've been in the same situation, we'll know they understand what's important.
So think about how you can help people benefit from the reassurance of a recommendation from someone they trust.
Getting your organisation a Google My Business profile and encouraging service users to leave reviews is a simple and free way to get and share feedback
Often the situations we help with in community organisations are very isolating because they're not easy to talk about and we don't necessarily know our friends and neighbours have been there too. We can't ask them to recommend a debt advice service in the same way we ask them to recommend a plumber.
So if you can share feedback from your service users, or encourage people with a public profile to talk about their experiences, that can help. They don't have to be celebrities, just someone your particular audience will relate to like a local faith leader or someone with a relevant trusted profession like a nurse.
If there are relevant awareness days for your organisation, I tend to find people are more willing to share their experiences as part of something wider like this, and you might also get a bit more attention if you’re sharing it on social media or as a press release. But then if you have their permission, you can also use the same quotes in your leaflets and other promotional materials year-round. (Just be sure to switch them up occasionally and keep it fresh)
