Marketers, Are You Listening?
Marketing has always been and will always be about identifying client requirements and providing solutions to meet those demands. It is about developing a relationship with the buyer that is founded on openness and trust. Has this evolved? Has the customer lost faith in the brands?
Data and technology have played an essential part in ushering in a new era of marketing that is more data-driven, automated, and in the moment. We now have a greater understanding of our buyers’ pulses and behaviors, and we can forecast their future actions and become more relevant in communication. But one thing that has concerned me over the years is that the connection has become more transitory; we have lost empathy for our clients, and in this new world of marketing, no one is genuinely loyal, not us or the brand.
We now know so much about our customers and their intentions that we have lost empathy.
Getting back to the roots of Marketing with Empathy
Human adversities have forced enterprises to go back to their roots Empathy. The pandemic is a recent one where enterprises have pivoted their brand strategy, more empathetic to their customers. Brands opted for more human and hopeful messaging. Brands stay away from provocative content and provide more useful content to customers.
Today more and more brands are talking about humanized, more personalized content with the customers. Buzzword personalization. To me, personalization is not just limited to delivering one-to-one content, but it’s an opportunity for brands to be more sensitive and considerate of their customer.
Empathy or Data, which one is more important to Marketing?
Let’s start with a more debatable topic. Empathy or Data which one is more important to marketing?
The biggest of the brand, Coca-Cola goes back to its roots with a focus on empathy and “understanding each other”. Coca Cola brand strategy clicked with the masses and prevailed in better brand uplift.
Adidas relived its brand strategy on human emotion. “Emotion drives action”. We, as humans, are extremely emotional. Clever brands can leverage emotion to drive sales.
Brands may put a lot of time into attempting to create the perfect advertising based on the data. That doesn’t imply it will be well received by your target audience. Too much reliance on data may leave you with blind spots that restrict you from producing fresh, imaginative ideas.
In marketing, combining data with customer empathy might provide tremendous returns. Brands can build something incredibly focused and significant.
Balance is key to achieving nirvana in marketing. MarTech platforms give an undue advantage to marketers to use data in the most potent way to have meaningful conversations with customers. Marketers must bring both worlds together.
Empathy
Data
Focus on Emotion
Customer Centricity
Have a great conversation
Customer Journeys
Good Listener
Understand and predict customer actions
Marketers are bad at Empathy.
Isn’t it Marketers are bad at empathy? They are always overpowered by the returns on investments. Marketers are focused on the brand’s outreach and the translation of outreach into revenue.
Predictions about what will appeal to the customer and their activities are the biggest enemy of marketers. The marketers used their own biases and personal preferences (thinking it’s empathy) to predict what will appeal to customers.
Data and MarTech have a role to play to break this notion. Experimentation is the key to testing, retesting, and validating the test result whether it resonated with the target customer base. Is it making sense to the customer, are we exploring all the possible hypotheses, testing and validating against the data points? This is extremely important as customers are humans, not data or digital touchpoints.
Building a journey of data from explicit data points to implicit data points will help marketers to have a better understanding of the preferences of customers and will help bring empathy to the communication.
What Marketers can do to fix the Brand-Customer Empathy Gap?
· Focus on building a connection before you focus on conversion.
· Consider your assumptions and biases before you do any more new marketing
· Ask yourself, is what you’re communicating grounded in customer insights?
· Understand the core emotional motivators of your customers
· Design messages and experiences that resonate with these core emotional drivers
· Use agile testing to get actionable customer motivation insights
· Transfer customer insights to different channels and scale up results
How to Reimagine Marketing with Empathy
Build Relationship
Marketers have evolved into salespeople. They are more concerned with marketing tales, products, and services to customers based on digital data provided by the customers. Marketers are so preoccupied with comprehending customers’ patterns and behaviors that they virtually forget about the customers themselves. Create a natural relationship with the customers by focusing on assisting them rather than marketing to them. We must recognize that the consumer is more than simply a digital touchpoint; they are actual people who will benefit from our assistance and service.
Listen to the customer.
We follow and monitor customers across all channels in today’s environment. We track clients on the web and mobile apps, as well as search engines and social media sites. We strive to study customer behavior and interaction patterns, but we fail to listen to customers’ demands, which are often extremely straightforward.
Rather than monitoring, prioritize listening to customers and their demands. Knowing the purpose, rather than just the behavior will allow a better understanding of customer wants and expectations.
Customer-first sentiment
Adopt customer centric approach and mindset. Try to visualize the customer challenges,
· Ask questions about why they will and will not buy your products and services.
· Experience what they are experiencing across the complete interaction and buying journey.
· Build and test the hypothesis.
· Test good look like as well as corner scenarios
· Understand the customer by being the customer itself.
The recipe is cooked to perfection
Communication is critical to success. The message must be clear and simple enough for non-experts to grasp. People will be turned off if your message is confusing.
Focus on the content, phrasing, and feelings to create a message that not only resonates with the target audience but also leaves a lasting impact.
Participate in the customer journey
Listening to customers and becoming a part of their journey may be the most important aspect of being an empathetic marketer. Your consumers, both pleased and dissatisfied, will teach you a lot. Take the time to hear their concerns, wants, and constructive feedback. Changes should be implemented as needed.
The key to connecting, engaging, and converting today’s customers is to adopt a more customer-centric, sympathetic approach. So, will you be including empathy in your marketing toolkit?
If empathy is already a component of your marketing plan, share your opinions on how it has helped you and your company stay connected with customers.
Looking for your thoughts Stefan Wolpers Meghan Keaney Anderson Mike Macioci Ryan Bonnici 🚀 CMO @ G2 Paul Berkovic Tim Soulo (CMO @ Ahrefs)
New to trading? Try crypto trading bots or copy trading on best crypto exchanges
Join Coinmonks Telegram Channel and Youtube Channel get daily Crypto News
