To understand someone, you need to walk a mile in their shoes.
While this decades-old life advice is relevant to every kind of relationship, it’s often overlooked by marketers.
Why?
Because they’re constantly obsessing over strategies, technologies, and the latest viral dance. And, because the online world is so saturated, they try and stand out by shouting the loudest.
While they’re hollering from the rooftops, they fail to take the time to really understand their audience; they fail to take the time to listen.
Such a simple word, but so effective if done right.
By sitting back and lending an ear, you can get to know your customers. Because, as humans, we have something really important that drives most things we do: emotion.
According to Columbia University business professor John O’Shaughnessy in his book The Marketing Power of Emotion, “knowing your customers’ emotions can help you identify an emotional script that goes from the triggering event to the thought to the feeling to the action.”
Basically, if you know how your customers are feeling, you can create a narrative with your marketing that ultimately leads to a purchase.
Let’s backtrack for a minute.
When we’re talking about understanding customer emotions, we’re talking about having empathy. This is defined as:
“The capacity to share and recognize the emotions felt by another being. In the context of conversion marketing, empathy allows you to understand your target audience, create relevant offers and engage with them in an authentic way.”
It’s about knowing what matters the most to your audience.
Think about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs here.
When you move past their basic human needs, what do you audiences crave next? What will help them achieve their full potential and feel accomplished?
When you can figure this out you can then determine how the answers align with your products or services.
If You Don’t Ask, You Don’t Get
Way too many marketers assume they know their customers.
They ask a few questions, run a bit of research, and come up with a persona.
But, in many cases, they ask the wrong questions – or, worse, don’t ask questions at all. Remember the saying “to assume makes an ass out of me and you”? Jumping to conclusions can actually have a detrimental effect on your business.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4jPp2NdDYY
So what do you need to know about your audience to get the empathy ball rolling?
If we strip it back to basics, you want to dig deeper than common demographic descriptions. Sure, you might be targeting dads between the ages of 30 and 45 who live in New York and have a household income of $75,000 or more.
But who are these men really? What kind of lifestyle do they have? What are their biggest challenges in life? What fears keep them up at night? What makes them dance for joy?
And then, what is a problem they have that your company solves?
In his book Empathetic Marketing, Mark Ingwer explains the six core emotional needs that your customers have:
- Control
- Self-expression
- Growth
- Recognition
- Belonging
- Care
In the customer persona infographic below, we’ve got the usual demographics on the left, but then we learn more about the millennial dad on the right, including what attitudes they have about certain aspects of life and the key habits they have.
Let’s look at an example.
Imagine, for a moment, that you’re releasing a shiny new product in the smartwatch market. Your pride and joy uses the latest technology with the fastest processor ever – amazing, right?
But how does that benefit the customer? How will that make their life better or, more dramatically, change it completely?
Take Apple, for instance. Their smartwatches boast some of the best technology in the world, but that’s not the information they use to sell it.
Instead, they align their story with the physiological or safety needs of their customers. These aren’t just watches with a cool steel band and an A8 processor; they are watches that help wearers live a healthier life. A better life.
This is where the value is in Apple’s smartwatches. Most people don’t care about the technology, but they do care about how wearing one will help improve their life.
Why Empathy is a Must-Have in Market
Let’s face it, marketers have a bad rubbish reputation. ing
They’re full of hype!.
They forget that relationships are built on trust and that trust drives revenue.
Empathy With Your Marketing Builds Understanding, Awareness, and Results
Consumers today crave deeper connections with the brands they buy from, and creating a two-way understanding with them is the first step in forming long-lasting relationships
Like with any relationship, knowing how the other party feels and what they fear creates a sense of trust and intimacy which, in business, leads to lifelong followers and fans.
You can then use this knowledge to create narratives, stories, and campaigns that spear right through to the core of how your audience is feeling.
How to Inject Your Marketing Strategy With Empathy
Now you know what empathy is and why it’s important, let’s dig into how you can inject a hearty dose of it into your marketing strategy.
- Internal Influencers
Making connections with your customers from the inside out can form deeper bonds. I’m talking about one of the biggest assets you have here – your employees.
According to research, consumers are more likely to sit up and listen to a message from your staff than a branded ad, so use this to your advantage.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIvLNUQQiH0
Kate Spade did exactly this with their Talking Shop series on YouTube. In each video, a staff member talked through the latest stock and the newest arrivals.
The series increased earned views by 5x and the average watch time went up by 39 seconds.
- Less Ads, More Storytelling
Stories are one of the oldest forms of communication in the human world, dating back thousands of years when the cavemen versions of us sat around crackling fires and exchanged news.
Today, marketers seem to be more driven by data than the thing that has proven time and time again to work. Sure, facts and figures are great for making informed decisions, but it’s the stories that really touch a customers heart and soul (and encourages them to reach for their wallet).
But despite the surge of new technologies, stories will always offer a more human way to connect.
At the moment, cutting edge emotional recognition software is being developed to provide what’s known as “sentiment assessments”. It uses facial, semantic, and sonic recognition to determine how someone is feeling. By 2021, this sector will be a $36 billion market, but someone companies are ahead of the curve and are already using it to test and run ad campaigns that tap into emotions.
- Give Something to Get Something
The art of reciprocity is not dead.
In fact, Dr. Robert Cialdini, professor emeritus of psychology and marketing at Arizona State University called out reciprocity as one of the six key principles of influence in his book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion.
The idea of giving something in order to get something in return has long been a part of every marketer’s toolbox and can be a great way to build trust with buyers.
You see, the buying process actually makes us suffer even if the thing we’re buying is something we really, really want. As humans, our brains are wired to experience loss aversion, so the loss we feel when we part with our money is greater than the positives that come with acquiring a new product.
If marketers give something in return, they’re dampening that loss aversion and upping the amount of positives involved with the purchase.
This doesn’t just relate to offering freebies in exchange for a customer’s email address; it can be something like offering a discount to first-time buyers or throwing in an additional goodie when someone makes a purchase.
Empathy is Vital in the Digital Age
Despite sitting with our faces in front of a screen all day, we’re actually craving more human connections than ever – perhaps because we’re sitting in front of a screen all day. The online world has opened up so many doors, but it has also created a need for human interaction.
For so many marketers, the digital landscape has provided a platform to reach people they could never reach before. But, even though the world is at their fingertips, it’s harder than ever to make real connections with the people they want as customers.
Tapping into something the digital world can’t (at the moment, at least, anyway) like emotions is a huge asset that marketers have.
By discovering what your audience want, need, crave, and fear in life, you can start to understand where your product or service fits in as a solution which, ultimately, will lead to more customers, more sales, and more revenue.