Reminder: Bring empathy into your B2B marketing

While advances in marketing technology continue at breakneck speed boosted now with AI, we still find businesses ailing from a fundamental marketing and sales problem – a lack of empathy for the customer.

In pursuit of opportunity pipelines and revenue targets we often lose sight of the fact that our customers don’t care about our product or our sales targets. They care about whether we solve their problem.

Quite often I find myself in conversations focussed on on ‘promoting the product’ and ‘highlighting differentiators’. An ex-colleague in sales often said ‘we need to show tangible benefits’ – a reasonable ask for sure, and the first step towards that is identifying what pains we’re trying to address in the first place. You’d be surprised how often that gets overlooked across departments.. (not to mention who exactly we’re addressing beyond a company name). We often make products that are cool and sell features instead of outcomes.

So today we take a reminder and #realitycheck into the challenges that marketing and sales used to solve and what its moving towards today.

From lack of information to information overload

Unlike the past, where the primary challenge for marketing and sales was establishing trust and familiarity in a crowded marketplace with limited and expensive ways to disseminate information, the new challenge lies in an overload of ‘uncontextualized’ information.” Today decision-makers are well-informed, extensively researching before engaging with vendors. However information on your company/offering are no longer enough. We need to show value well before getting a signature on a dotted line. Of course if your company isn’t findable on google or social and you’re resorting to cold calls without providing value, you’ve got even more problems.

Empathy as the North Star

To stand out today there needs to be more focus on a core human trait – empathy. Understanding the pains, challenges, and aspirations of your target audience should be the compass that guides your communication and delivery. Acknowledging the buyer’s journey, respecting their time, and providing value at every interaction is vital. Now empathy should be build into product, marketing, sales and service but for now let’s keep things a bit focussed on empathy in marketing.

How do you infuse empathy into your your marketing:

1. Persona-Centric Communication:Your buyers are on a journey, a quest, to solve a problem. They are the hero of the story, not you. And unless you treat them as the hero of that journey and position yourselves as the guru/guide showing the way, chances are that they’ll look past your ads, bounce off your website or walk past you at the tradeshow. Tailor your messaging to resonate with the unique challenges and goals of your target personas. Speak their language, address their pain points, and offer a plan, process and pathway to solve them before inserting your product/offering into the conversation whether its online or in person.
2. Omnichannel Consistency: Again, that journey your buyers are on – is an omnichannel one today. They’re searching on google, scrolling through social, scanning emails and user reviews or even attending webinars, events and tradeshows to educate themselves and find a safe choice to solve their problem. Each of these touchpoints contributes to the overall perception. That doesn’t mean you need to be on every platform, but try to be available wherever your audience is and be consistent and relevant at all times.
3. Automate and scale! ok, you’ve got the perfect solution, award winning content and great pricing. Then why aren’t the leads pouring in ? Well its probably because the content, product or impression you made has been forgotten along an year long buying cycle. If you want to win clients you’ll need to need to stay top of mind by nurturing them with relevant content, commerce or experiences. But attending to every prospect at every point in their journey can be cumbersome if done manually – some things just don’t scale easily. That’s where technologies like Marketing Automation comes in. But it isn’t enough to just own a hubspot/pardot/acton/marketo etc. you’ll need to construct lead personalized nurturing pathways and stringing together content, emails that offer value instead of purely pitching product. Offer helpful or educational content, trends, tips tricks before you offer your product/offering.
4. Listen and learn – in person and through data: Leverage analytics to gain deep insights into your audience’s behavior. Understand preferences, track interactions, and use this information to personalize your engagement strategy. Don’t forget to validate through in person conversations too – they offer nuances to round off a comprehensive understanding of your audience to help fine-tune your strategy for better personalization and relevance.
5. Show up ! and build authentic relationships: The sale is just the beginning. Cultivate long-term relationships by staying engaged post-purchase. Seek feedback, provide ongoing support, and showcase how your solutions contribute to their success. Where possible, build online/offline communities through events and trade shows as well – We all need a bit of human connection.

Thus in an era where the challenge has shifted from information obscurity to information overload, empathy becomes paramount. By understanding, connecting, and resonating with your audience, your brand can cut through the noise and emerge as a trusted partner in the modern buyer’s journey.

Remember, your customer is the hero in the story and you’re the guide. Create compelling micro moments along their journey and build authentic relationships – you’ll strike gold. Good luck!

#B2BMarketing #EmpathyInBusiness #OmnichannelStrategy #Authenticrelationships