Let’s face it; marketing can be a little dehumanizing sometimes.
We pump out ads, blast emails, and fixate on metrics like our lives depended on them. And with the rise of Gary Vee-types, Facebook ad courses, and influencer-style marketers, the “hustle hard” mentality has driven many towards “hacks” and “tricks”.
But “quick results” don’t always translate into sustainable business.
The truth is, there are real names and faces behind those numbers and dollar signs. Your customers are humans (crazy, huh?) and treating them as such is good for business. A human touch will not only turn prospects into customers, it will turn customers into life-long fans. In fact, consumers are craving authentic connection with brands.
That’s why we’re sharing our favorite ways to humanize your marketing.
1. Ease up on the automation.
Ever received a marketing email that was addressed to {First Name} or had a completely irrelevant offer?
An over-reliance on marketing automation will do that to you.
At a market value of $6bn USD in 2019, marketing automation software has boomed over the past few years. While there’s no denying the importance of automation – especially for fast-growing companies – it’s not a magical, money-making machine either.
Automation should be used for repetitive and redundant processes; not for going on autopilot. That means starting with human conversations first and scaling automation later.
If you’re finding yourself caught in a web of automation and you’re not sure what will trigger what, it’s time to take a step back and give your marketing a little human intervention.
2. Talk with – not at – customers.
Human relationships are built through a series of thoughtful dialogues, not monologues. And yes, that applies to customer relationships too.
But how do you initiate conversation with a target market of thousands people (if not hundreds of thousands)?
Social media and live chat apps have made deep customer dialogue not just possible, but scalable as well. But you need the right message.
Talking with customers means centering your marketing message around them: their problems rather than your product, their aspirations rather than your brand slogans. Listen and speak to their human emotions, thoughts, and desires, and they’ll start to hear you too.
3. Don’t forget the context.
Remember receiving dozens of promo emails the week before Black Friday? So do your customers.
A handful of people in your database may purchase based on repetitive email blasts but consider the other 80% of your customers. At best they’ll ignore or unsubscribe, and at worst they’ll complain to you and all their friends on social media.
Humanizing your marketing means reminding yourself of the larger context in which it sits and thinking through how it will play out in your customers’ hands. If there’s a chance an email or an ad will annoy them, it most likely will.
4. Ask for feedback (and follow through)
It’s pretty much impossible to have a personable brand without customer feedback.
Customer feedback is easier to retrieve when you’re just starting out and working as a small team. But as your company grows, teams get fractured, which puts more distance between marketing and the customer.
That’s why it’s critical for marketing to be proactive and routinely sit with customer support and sales people to hear from customers directly. Hear their praises so you can double down on them. Hear their concerns before they are plastered all over Google.
Closing Thoughts
The key to humanizing your marketing and your overall brand is to prioritize lifetime value over short-term gains. Use automation strategically, focus your message on the customer, remember their context, and always look for feedback.
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