When was the last time someone held out the door for you in a restaurant? Or someone addressed you by your first name while taking your order?
What made you feel nice about it was not just the personal attention but the HUMAN attention. World would have been much simpler had we been marketing Pedigree biscuits to enthusiastic puppies. Unfortunately the puppies do not have money to buy. It is the humans who own their purse. Behind every organization, designation, customer, buyer there sits a human being- thinking feeling and making decisions. And this human being’s decisions are never rational. They are emotional.
It is key for organizations to cater to the emotional needs of customer to build superior experience. The rest follows much like the chicken and egg story but here the egg came first. And so indeed marketeers need to make the first move to establish the emotional connect.
It has been proved by MRI neuro-imagery that consumers, while evaluating brands, primarily use emotions (personal feelings and experiences) rather than information (brand attributes, features, and facts).
Advertising research reveals that emotional response to an ad has far greater influence on a consumer’s reported intent to buy a product than does the ad’s content – by a factor of 3-to-1 for television commercials and 2-to-1 for print ads.
However, building the HUMANIZING experience goes beyond that. Humanized marketing relies on two basic factors
Emotional awareness in how you treat your customers
Emotional intelligence in how your brand communicates to your customers
I explored part 1 in my previous post here how organizations can encourage the culture of treating their customers well.
Part 2 is much more relevant in today’s virtual world. The role of marketing in organizations is fundamentally changing. This is age of “the customer comes to you”, 53% of decisions and impressions are already made up in the customer’s mind before the first interaction point with your brand. Starting then roughly THREE SECONDS is what you get before you get to make you first impression and emotional connect with the customer.
How then, can we rely on content marketing to build human and emotional connect and what we say and how we say it?
TELL A STORY.
Stories are about characters like your customers and their experiences. They instantly relate to the buyers’ need, desire and wants- it is all about them. No one cares about what you offer unless it is a part of their story, their journey.
KNOWLEDGE MARKETING
In one word- Don’t sell products. Sell information. Educate and inspire. Teach them HOW you THINK and thus help them understand your products. Ex: Don’t sell me a camera. Teach me how to take a great picture.
Goldman Sachs launched a Progress video campaign in which it profiled the companies in which it has invested, and the positive changes those companies made in the world.
HELP THEM CONNECT
n this shrinking digital world, Systems of engagement are the next big thing. They bridge the gap between traditional knowledge residing in one place and the users in another. People like to connect and share with likeminded people. Help build those communities-provide an active engagement platform to build loyalty. Support them by crowdsharing and tweetchats.
When building your content strategy:
LISTEN: building communities also enables to view them as collective group. What do they want? What is on their mind?
ASPIRE: not for yourself but for your buyer. Help them talk about their aspirational journey. What they want and need for themselves- you exist to help.
Example British Airways campaign enables a couple to afford their DREAM Honeymoon. Every airline takes you to a destination. But BA helped them dream and live it. This emotional connect stays long with the brand.
Remember the science of buying is not RATIONAL but EMOTIONAL. So your content and messaging needs to cater to the influential emotion helping making the buying decision. AND positive emotions toward a brand have far greater influence on consumer loyalty than trust.
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