The new wisdom in marketing today is that businesses must market directly to individual consumers. People are placing an increasing value on personalized experiences. Instead of B2C or B2B, brands today follow the new trend of ‘B2Me’ marketing.
Here’s the catch, though: influences exert themselves both ways. As more products and services surround us in our lives that are responsive and offer personalized options, we start expecting the same thing across the board.
That can become a problem when we pursue endeavors that are inherently challenging or complicated. Improving your health is one such issue. Can we simplify the tasks and decisions involved through a personalized approach and thereby achieve long-term health goals?
Personalization in tech
The desire for customization isn’t new. It permeates every aspect of our lives. Even amid a pandemic, we don’t just wear stock face masks; we look for custom-made ones for sale. Arguably, it’s been the product manufacturers and service providers across industries who are just starting to catch up.
Personalized experiences are already manifest in the realm of fitness. Witness how wearable tech has become a staple among individuals looking to turn their lives around.
Devices such as the Fitbit track your activity, including exercise, sleep patterns, and calorie consumption. They make it easier for you to make personalized decisions leading to healthier lifestyle choices.
However, the power of these wearables isn’t limited to the individual. It can be aggregated and fed into Big Data infrastructure. From there, the information can be shared with healthcare providers, employers, and supermarkets, for instance. In turn, those organizations are better able to provide you with medical advice, health and wellness options at work, and healthy produce, respectively.
Across the internet, various websites also use cookies to track your behavior. Concerns about data privacy have given this feature a rather dubious reputation. But companies can use this technology to give you an experience that’s tailored to your interests. Search more often for health-related products, for instance, and you’ll get future recommendations along those lines without further effort.
Understanding motivation
Most companies may be just starting to scratch the surface of what personalized experiences can offer. And you can already harness their power in the quest for improvements to your health and well-being.
But why stop there? You’d only be limited to the progress and innovation that businesses are capable of releasing to the market. You can take matters into your own hands and apply personalization to other aspects of your life.
Doing so requires a better understanding of the psychology involved. The need to customize our possessions and the things we’re doing is driven by unique personal motivations. However, these can be grouped into categories that share similar features.
Studies of digital consumer behavior reaffirm that we experience products as a journey. Our overall impression can be defined by the endpoint of that process. But we can also overcome any feelings of disappointment by making the process more intense and emotionally engaging.
Personalizing your health journey
This ties in to your health goals because achieving them is not about the end product. It’s a journey. And by exploiting the potential of personalized experiences, you can make an often arduous process enjoyable.
Think about health as a service you’re trying to sell. A consumer can cycle through different mindsets. They may be disinterested or disoriented. They could also be neutral and merely exploring their options, or mindful and focused on getting something specific out of the experience.
A lot of health advice tends to cater to the extremes. It can target people who are skeptical about the entire process of improving health or those who are already highly motivated about getting into shape and following a balanced diet.
But what about those who are in between? What if someone is sitting on the fence, unsure of how to implement change or where they can squeeze it into their current lifestyle?
Of course, you’re not selling health as a service to any audience but yourself. Ultimately, your goal will be to personalize your health journey. Make it highly engaging in a manner that best suits your current mindset.
Sometimes you’ll need extensive education on the pros and cons of a particular workout or diet. Maybe you need incentives to help offset any unpleasant experiences.
At other times, when motivation is high, or you’re genuinely interested, you’ll want to work on anchoring your behaviors to existing habits. This makes it easier to reinforce a healthy lifestyle and makes you less prone to fluctuations in motivation and energy.
Nobody knows you better than yourself. You can supplement that knowledge with tech, but it’s still up to you to make it count and craft a personalized lifestyle change.
