Gone are the days where marketers did whatever they could to push people into the sales funnel. Today, consumers want to be engaged with. They want to feel a personal connection with the brands they align themselves with like they’re being cared for by someone close to them (like family or friends). To get this right, marketers have had to become transparent, honest, and personal with their target audiences. So, to answer the question in the title, empathy-based marketing has become the new normal. Let’s see how we can use empathy in our marketing, and a few tips on how to get it right:
Using empathy in your marketing
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Add human elements to your brand
We often forget that, while we develop general target personas when we plan marketing campaigns, the people that we are talking to are real people with real feelings and needs. So, for your brand to really engage with people in an empathic manner, it needs to have its own human characteristics. For example, your marketing should speak in a specific tone, and have its own personality that comes across in the marketing content.
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Remember that people are different
Casting a wide net with marketing and advertising messages is something that died in the 1980s. Well, it didn’t die – it just got more focused. The truth is that customers want to feel appreciated on a personal level. They want to feel like they are the only customer you have, and want their specific needs met if they are to part with their hard-earned money. So, by getting to know customers personally, brands can build real, human relationships with people – no matter who they are.