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We live in an age rich in useful data that gives brands and companies a wealth of insight into the views, emotions, needs and preferences of their target audience. And these observations are indispensable to the continued success of any organization.
But, with a plethora of metrics readily available at our fingertips, it’s all too easy to concentrate on data alone and step away from one of the most critical aspects of any effective digital marketing campaign: the human aspect.
Studies show that customers are 53 percent more likely to engage in real-time interaction with a business-a testament to the critical value of personal relations in today’s hyper-connected digital era.
With so many touchpoints and so much to remember, appealing to the right consumers in a way that is not seen as commercial or excessively corporate can seem like a monumental challenge. In this post, we discuss how to humanize the digital marketing activities of your organization.
Express Empathy
As humans, empathy is a vital element in the building and formation of bonds with others. This ensures you have a better chance of inspiring the viewer to engage, if your organization is able to foster empathy through your digital marketing promotions or communications.
Empathy enables us to experience, share and respond – and the brand would eventually open up a two-way conversation with prospects rather than speak to people through empathy.
By making social listening an integral part of your campaign planning, your Marketing Team will build an abundance of content that evokes empathy, encourages and facilitates constructive interaction, using key demographic data and detailed buyer information to get to know and understand your audience personally.
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In order to inspire compassion and engage customers at a personal level, the natural cosmetics company, LUSH, created a video mini-series called ‘How It’s Made,’ which unfolds behind the scenes of the business providing insights into the individuals who produce the brand’s most pivotal products.
As informative as it is entertaining, it not only gives customers a real sense of openness through an insight into the core value of a brand, but it also enables the viewers to develop a more profound link with the brand with the visually inspiring nature of the videos.
Boost Your Brand Storytelling
Digital customers today respond to a strong narrative, which is why brand storytelling is an extremely important marketing tool in today’s world.
Human beings have told from early man’s day history to transfer knowledge on to the sublime and personal level, to entertain, to inspire and to connect. And in the modern world, this idea remains the same-it’s just that today, there are far more outlets, mediums and touchpoints by which we can share our stories.
With 45 percent of the brand reputation related to what it says and how it says it, telling your story in an engaging, entertaining and relatable way is important if you want to raise awareness and inspire the right people to interact with your organization.
Experts agree that brand storytelling is the future of content marketing strategy and helps the organization prepare, create, grow and execute your story in a way that engages the audience at a meaningful level.
Act in real-time
Currently, 77% of people are not going to make a purchase on a website unless there is a live chat option.
Today’s digital natives crave answers to their questions and solutions to their problems in an instant, which means the ability to spark up conversations and react to your prospects in real-time is an invaluable way to demonstrate your brand’s human side.
In the digital domain, people expect a customized link to products that is tailored to their unique questions, curiosities, desires and problems.
Ensuring that each of the people-facing touchpoints is sensitive, that questions are quickly answered, responses to issues are timely and that the right content is shared with the right people at the right time can eventually build a partnership to add value to the brand’s growth and development.
Add Automation Elements
Although automation can seem out of place here, stand-alone technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI ) and machine learning (ML) may benefit your organization, not only in terms of real-time responsiveness, but with broader digital marketing initiatives.
Of all the autonomous innovations that have appeared in recent years, chatbots are probably the most useful when it comes to humanizing robotic marketing.
Take the software provider, MongoDB, for example. As a result of the popularity of its online chat service, the company began to struggle to satisfy increasing customer demand and, as a result, their interactions became less frequent and more impersonal.
In order to fix this problem and humanize their interactions while giving their sales and marketing teams a focus on other areas of the company, MongoDB partnered up with the developer Drift, using ‘Leadbot‘ to ensure that sales team members only talk to those deemed most likely to connect and convert, allowing the personable machine learning entities to cover all general enquiries.
As a result of this chatbot project, the company increased its total messaging response by 100 percent while enjoying a substantial increase in conversions.
Encourage Brand Advocacy
When it comes to humanizing digital marketing campaigns, brand advocacy is a strong weapon.
90% of people trust their peers’ views, feelings and perceptions about conventional advertising. Moreover, brand messages are more than 24 times more likely to be posted if they are sent to the staff of the brand than to the brand itself.
Through using staff or loyal customers to spread your brand message, to engage in social media, to build content that is based on what you have defined as being most important to your prospects, you can make your digital marketing efforts human in ways that highlight your importance in a way that conventional advertisement does not do.
To make good use of brand advocacy, the organization will need to provide an opportunity for human involvement by triggering social media discussions, asking questions, developing engaging content, developing quizzes and hosting competitions that involve response and response. In addition, engaging workers is essential to driving brand advocacy and growing the scope of new and potentially invested consumers.
Conclusion
Although data is an important part of your ability to develop and build your marketing strategies, to make informed decisions that drive growth and transformation, the way you execute your initiatives will ultimately determine your success.
Take the time to humanize the marketing activities of your organization now to reap benefits far into the future.