Empathy is the ability to comprehend and share the feelings of others. It’s a pivotal element of emotional intelligence which is seen as an essential quality of leadership in our current day. More than that, empathy is something that we all can relate to; especially during times of hardship or uncertainty.
As marketers, we know that consumer buying decisions can be data-driven but at the end of the day for customers, it’s more simple than that. Their decisions are driven by emotion, desire or need. In this blog, we’ll break down more of the reasons why it’s pivotal to understand and empathize with customers throughout your marketing strategy.
The Role of Empathy in Marketing Strategy
Empathy in marketing is a strategy that empowers content creators to see the world through the customer’s eyes. It leans away from the classic hard-sell approach as you consider the customer experience and think about how your product or service can help them get closer to the life they want.
For customers, their motivation could be anything from having more free time, improving their health or a better work-life balance. Understanding their day-to-day, likes and dislikes and overall challenges helps inform you how to better connect with them.
How to Flex Your Empathy Muscle
The first step to marketing with empathy is knowing your audience. Your customers are people, just like you; they have wants, needs and feelings that drive their buying behaviors and decision making. A great way to start is through these tactics.
Social Listening:
Social Listening is the act of watching, consuming and participating in social channels where your target audience lives digitally. This allows you to see firsthand about the challenges they’re facing and in some cases, hear direct feedback that could improve your product or service. This could be your own social media support forums, Reddit channels or review aggregators like Google or Capterra.
Hearing about challenges directly from customers takes the guesswork out of your empathy approach. It provides direct examples of areas where prospects or customers need help, which provides marketers with the ability to proactively work those answers into their strategic approach.
Customer Surveys:
Another great way of collecting consumer feedback is through Customer Surveys. Are you curious about what your customers want from your product? Ask them! In the age of social media, users are more likely than ever to speak up about challenges and opportunities. At the end of the day, it’s a benefit to both parties as customers feel heard and your team gains insight to better connect with them.
Internal Team Collaboration:
Marketers oftentimes don’t have the value of interacting with customers or prospects directly, but their teammates do! These teams hear more of the challenges your customers face than anyone else and can share specific details to help support your overall marketing approach. Partner closely with your Customer Success and Sales team members. Schedule time to transfer knowledge between these teams to hear more about what customers are saying, what their challenges and concerns are to work into your approach.
Personalize your approach:
Using marketing automation and tools, you can personalize your content. Use tags to include the user’s first name in your subject lines, or email greetings. This helps break down the barriers of “marketer” and “consumer” and empowers you to connect directly as people.
Show, Don’t Tell:
The hard-sell approach relies on telling users what and why they need to buy. Modern marketing tactics take that one step further to show users in live demos, Q&A sessions and webinars how you can support them.
Don’t rely on one-pagers or bullet points to sell your product, show prospects directly how you can help them, what is relevant to them and how this can help get them one step closer to a solution to their challenges.
Campaigns, communication and messaging are more genuine and therefore more effective in connecting with your targets. A good marketing strategy is one that steers away from the hard sell and emotionally connects with your audience.
Establishing trust with your prospects and customers shows, in more ways than one. As you build empathy and trust with your audiences, you’ll notice higher conversion rates, improved customer satisfaction and higher customer retention rates.
Building customer loyalty goes a long way and Copysmith wants to help you on that journey. Copysmith is a powerful AI solution that empowers teams to scale marketing and drive growth through copy. If you’re looking for a way to increase traffic and get more leads, we’re here to help.
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