People buy from people. This crucial fact should be at the heart of every marketing strategy, but it’s so often overlooked in favour of stats, buzzwords and the latest technology.
All your marketing activity is leading up to the same point. This is where a person makes contact with another person, to buy a product or make a sale.
This is make or break time, where success can rely on the skill of the sales person. They need to make a connection with the customer, to overcome their concerns and persuade them to take the next step.
But this is only the end of the process. There’s so much work that goes on before that critical moment of human connection can happen. That means putting the customer at the very centre of your marketing strategy, at every stage. If you prioritise the needs, desires, challenges and motivations of the human being throughout, you have a better chance of reaching this golden moment.
Even fully digitised and automated ecommerce businesses rely on the human touch to some degree. Their marketing campaigns need to be persuasive and trigger an emotional reaction, which requires a decent working knowledge of human psychology.
There’s also the importance of standing out from the crowd. Customers are immune to sales patter and marketing jargon by now, and can see through flimsy attempts to be authentic. You need the human touch to really make an impact, to breathe life and personality into your brand.
How to give your marketing ‘the human touch’
To make your campaigns more compelling and to humanise your brand, here are some pointers to remember:
- Ditch the business jargon and imagine you’re speaking to a friend. Use everyday language and be clear and friendly. That’s pretty much all there is to it. If it’s appropriate for your brand, you can even use some humour or be a little quirky. But above all, be natural. If you read it back and it sounds weird or forced, it’s time for a rethink.
- Put yourself in your customer’s shoes. This is an excellent tip for marketers and sales professionals alike. Get under the skin of your target customer, fully understand their needs and build your campaigns around these valuable insights.
- Not every email has to be a big sales pitch. Sometimes, you can just send your mailing list an article you think they’ll enjoy, or a freebie with no strings attached. It’s about getting your audience to warm to the brand, and not just about making a sale.
- Get your people front and centre. One of the best ways to humanise your brand is to help your customers get to know the people who work there. This builds trust, loyalty and your brand reputation.
These are some handy tips for delivering marketing communications, but they’re only the tip of the iceberg.
To really harness the power of human contact in your marketing campaigns, you’ll need a radical rethink of the way you reach your customers. This means a holistic, end-to-end approach, that always has the end goal – the moment of connection – in sight.
This is where Future Marketing comes in, as everything we do is motivated by the power of human contact. Get in touch to find out how our unique end-to-end marketing approach could do amazing things for your brand.
