When marketing to potential leads, longtime customers, investors, or industry partners, the persuasiveness of language, organization of data points, and articulating the value of your product is essential to encourage understanding of what you’re offering and drive sales.
Increasingly, businesses are taking a “Human to Human” approach to their communications to create meaningful connections and leaning into new practices that humanize buying experiences.
Even before the pandemic, the outbreak of war in Europe, and the current economic uncertainty, buyers wanted more than just data points, features, and benefits – today, buyers want recognition and compassion.
Take a look at these three capabilities to connect with potential and current clients:
1. Understand your ideal customer
Knowing what your product can do and what pain points it solves is table stakes – to resonate with customers and prospects, you need to understand who they are, their challenges, and what your product helps them achieve.
Conduct market research where you and your team deeply immerse yourselves in understanding the characteristics of your “ideal customer.” Build a persona by interviewing current and past customers, listening in on sales calls, reviewing past engagement and product reviews, and developing a deep knowledge of your competitors.
With leadership from the CMO or iCMO, the marketing team can create materials your ideal consumer will relate to and tell your brand story. From there, create a messaging strategy that addresses your ideal customer’s pain points, challenges, and needs. Copy created from this strategy should help “humanize” your marketing communication efforts making them more relatable and engaging.
2. Create an organic customer experience
Buyers want to work with brands they trust, show care, and follow through on service. A customer experience should include more than sales meetings and new feature updates. Providing meaningful information, valuable resources, and thought leadership shows that your organization is connected, cares about the industry, and is dedicated to making customers successful.
3. Turn insights into action
Getting feedback, collecting performance data, and tweaking messaging and content are essential to ensuring that your messaging evolves with your clients’ needs. Listening to criticisms, troubleshooting, and effectively communicating change can be tricky, but getting it right is worth it!
Implement change from the inside-out
Human to human tactics differs from implementing a new CRM technology or releasing a new product feature. It’s shifting the mindset and culture of how your team does business. Here are a few pointers to help you and your team get started:
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Gain a clear understanding of your customer’s goals, company mission, and challenges during the exploration process so you know their needs better than they do.
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In every customer meeting, take the time to get to know the client, ask them questions to grow your knowledge, and actively listen to them. Show that you are interested in who they are as a person (and in their organization), not just in making a sale.
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Train your team in this new approach to business. Host development meetings, provide messaging documents, and lead by example.
It’s easy to focus on closing deals, but ultimately, a human makes the final decision.
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