Empathetic content marketing is all about gaining prospects’ trust and building strong personal relationships. To achieve this, you have to go beyond rational, logical marketing. Instead, identify customers’ emotional motivators, and base your strategies around them. When you truly understand what they want, your content will reflect your intentions and the recipients will accept it as well.
The important thing to remember is that empathetic marketing isn’t a one-off, feel-good campaign. For it to be effective, empathetic marketing strategies need continuous monitoring and improvement as per changing times. To ensure you stay on the right path, here are 7 dos and don’ts to keep in mind.
Do factor in the audience’s emotional needs
Put your ears to the ground and use social listening techniques to know about your audience’s emotional needs, likes, and dislikes. Since you are creating content for them, they must be central to your plans. Identify their trigger points and show that you empathize with them. Once you have this in place, you can design content more easily and accurately.
Don’t make it all about you
Your sole purpose must be to understand what your audience’s needs are, and through your content, connect with them on an emotional level. With this in mind, ensure the content you create isn’t talking only about you. Instead, focus on acknowledging and empathizing with your customer’s requirements, projecting your organization as the seamless, best-fit solution subliminally. Give them the freedom to make an informed choice when it comes to picking your products or services, instead of constantly nudging them to choose you.
Do listen to changing sentiments
Use social listening techniques to keep a tab on how economic, political, and social changes affect the market, industry, and audiences’ moods. Optimize your content marketing efforts accordingly and remain fresh and relatable in your audience’s minds. This is an important aspect of empathetic marketing. By keeping pace with evolving thoughts and emotions, you can reinstate that you not only provide result-driven, customer-centric solutions, but also truly have your audience’s best interests in mind.
Don’t use a negative tone
Undoubtedly, you operate within a competitive market and wish to outrank your peers with higher revenue, greater market share, and engaged followership. However, guardrails of empathetic marketing indicate that you must steer clear of any negativity. This means, never use your competitors’ shortcomings to show that you are better than them.
Today’s B2B customer is extremely intelligent and will instantly notice a negative tone or approach. Even a one-off instance can tarnish your brand image. So, when creating empathetic content, always take the high road. Instead of pitting or comparing yourself with other business entities, use clever content to showcase how you provide the best solutions in the market, in line with your audience’s needs. Over time, you will be recognized for your ability to operate on your audience’s wavelength, and to cater to their needs and requirements efficiently.
Do pay attention to execution
Use your content to build awareness about your organization and products/services. However, pay attention to tonality. A neutral tone works best, as you don’t want to come across as preachy, condescending, or worse yet, boastful—as all of them can drive your audience away.
Instead, you must focus on how you can provide and enhance value, basis your insights about the emotional factors that drive decision-making and purchase. Direct your energies towards creating content that addresses your audience’s pain points, without a hard-sell approach. This change in perception is all you need to elevate your content marketing strategy.
Don’t compromise on quality
The entire purpose of empathetic marketing is to create content that your audience will resonate with. As the process of creation can be labor-intensive, rather than churning out content for the sake of it, take a step back and view the big picture. Double-down on quality content, where every piece is in tune with your audience’s thoughts and emotions, rather than volume. It’s better to have fewer pieces of content, where each one strikes a chord with your audience, rather than multiple pieces that miss the mark and generate negligible impact.
Do engage with your audience
While creating thoughtful content is key, engaging with your audience on all platforms is equally essential. It completes the loop of communication and makes your empathetic marketing efforts more holistic. So, don’t stop at simply authoring articles, for instance. Ensure that you go a step further to have conversations, and reply to suggestions and feedback in a timely manner.
Not only will this appease your audience, but it will also help you garner a deeper understanding of your target group and what they’re feeling in real time. When you incorporate these learnings into your empathetic marketing, you’ll be able to achieve even better outcomes.
Infusing your content with empathy may seem complicated, but the pay-off is certainly worth the investment. At Resolute B2B, we help our clients make this transition with our suite of content marketing services. Whether you want to humanize your organization or improve perception, contact us to flag-off the process.
