By: Elizabeth Coffey, Marketing G2 Digital Marketing Specialist

Silicon Valley has used brain-hacking, a process by which our brains are rewarded with a dopamine hit for using technology like our smart phones, to draw us in and make us addicted to using their product, program, etc. Marketing too, when done correctly, can help your consumers form a habit around your brand.

You need to design what is known as a ‘hook cycle’ to draw users in and get them addicted to the subscriber-based services your brand has to offer. A hook cycle is made up of four essential components:

1. Triggers – Triggers can be either internal or external and are what drives users to act. External triggers are your direct marketing efforts. The e-mails, push notifications, and SMS messages that you send out are all examples of external triggers. Internal triggers are the thoughts and deep emotional responses your marketing prooduces for your customer around your brand.


2. Actions – Actions are the desired outcome a marketer wishes to see the consumer take as the direct result of the trigger. It’s important that the desired action is made as easy and as frictionless as possible so the consumer doesn’t encounter any obstacles on the way to completing the action.


3. Rewards – Rewards reinforce the desired action a marketer wants a client to take with a dopamine hit. It’s important to vary the rewards you give your consumers because human beings are programmed to notice whatever is new and novel over what has been normalized. There are three types of rewards:


• Personal gratification – Rewards that give your customers a sense of achievement or competence.


• Social Rewards – These rewards increase your consumers’ perceived social standing among their peers.


• Acquisition Rewards – Rewards that appeal to consumers’ desire to obtain physical objects.


4. Investment – Investment is the built-in time and effort spent by the consumer and is used to ensure that consumers value the reward. People value what they work to obtain. In an ideal world, this investment creates the next trigger which drives the engine of the ‘hook cycle.’

How are you keeping your subscribers interested?