Putting yourself in the someone else’s shoes. Easier said than done, right? What more if you always need to consider empathy as a marketer, when we are consumed with launching campaigns and boosting revenues most of the time?
During these trying times, a little customer empathy won’t hurt. Empathy is a skill and just like marketing, it’s a never ending learning process. Taking time to get to know your customers, reaching out and having conversations with them, and understanding their pain points may just lead you to be more effective marketer. Empathizing with what they truly feel and where they are coming from may just inspire you to create a humanized marketing campaign, and your audience will most likely to be drawn to your work as well. In your own way, what steps have you made to make your business/product evoke human emotions?
Why and How to Bring Empathy Into Your Content
People are looking for information, and depending on your industry, there may be several content opportunities for you to dig into. Or maybe you are in an industry where it’s business as (un)usual, and you have to create email newsletters or blog content like you always have.
How to infuse content marketing with empathy
Empathy is a skill. Those who master it gain the ability to create content that not only addresses a surface problem or issue, but also hits a deeper level by accessing the perspectives and emotions involved.
How to Get People to Engage With You and Your Blog
Be the community you want to create
If you want people to be engaging with you then you need to be engaging to them.
For some of you, this will be easy. My wife’s pretty good at this, especially on Instagram. Whenever someone makes a comment she’ll comment back and then head off to like their page. She loves this kind of engagement.
But some of you might struggle a little. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s like any other skill: some people pick it up easily, while others need to work a little harder to get there.
Unfortunately, you really do need to engage with your readers before you can expect them to engage with you. It’s a big commitment. But if you’re willing to make that commitment then the strategies I’m about to share with you will make a real difference.
Marketing in Times of Uncertainty – Whiteboard Friday
Businesses need to change their tone and attitude and in three ways. And that’s what I want to talk through.
Three crucial points
1. Cut with a scalpel, not with a chainsaw
First off, as you are looking to save money and if you’re an agency, if you’re a consultant, your clients are almost certainly saying, “Hey, where can we pull back and still get returns on investment?” And I think one of the important points is not to cut with a chainsaw. Right. Not to take a big whack to, “Oh, let’s just look at all of our Google and Facebook ad spending and cut it out entirely.” Or “Let’s look at all of our content marketing investments and drop them completely.” That’s not probably not the right way to go.
Instead, we should be looking to cut with a scalpel, and that means examining each channel and the individual contributors inside channels as individuals and looking at whether they are ROI-positive.
5 Ways SEO Can Shine a Light on Your Unseen B2B Content
Ungate the Good Stuff
Five years ago, the best practice for marketers was to gate your most valuable content. It makes sense: You’re offering something great, so people should be willing to offer their contact info in return for it. It’s a simple value exchange.
The flip side, though, is that your most impressive and useful content is now being seen by a smaller audience. You’re intentionally introducing a barrier between your target audience and your most persuasive content.
I’ll grant that the debate of “to gate or not to gate” is ongoing, and marketers are seeing results with either tactic. But especially for SEO purposes, we recommend trying an ungated approach.
How to Create a Branded Content Marketing Strategy
Appeal to Your Audience’s Emotions
Branded content often leverages audience emotions to generate sales.
How this works with positive emotions is pretty simple. You can either present your product like the one thing which will make your customers happy, or appeal to a sense of nostalgia.
The use of negative emotions in branded content is more subtle. Often, this involves discussing a problem or injustice that your audience cares about. You can then present your product as helping to solve this.
But this is not the only reason branded content needs to do this. When people are confronted with a decision, they affix emotions from previous experiences to their options. This is why nostalgia is such a powerful selling tool. These then lead to action.
5 Stars: 20+ Tips to Invigorate Your B2B Marketing Using Testimonials & Reviews
You May Already Have a Goldmine of Testimonials
Many established B2B brands may already have a fantastic cache of glowing testimonials from clients, however because some firms don’t have any established practice for gathering, collecting, and most importantly utilizing them in marketing efforts, they remain mostly hidden.
Gathering existing reviews and testimonials can be a great way to get new insight into your most loyal customers, unearth any points of customer dissatisfaction, and to build new mechanisms for improving communication with your customers.
“Your offerings should be so attractive to your loyalists that they have no reason to look elsewhere for additional products or services,” Rob Markey wrote in an insightful Harvard Business Review look at how to “Make It Easier for Happy Customers to Buy More.”
How to Use Social Media for Keyword Research
1. Use Facebook Ad Targeting Options for a Glimpse into Audiences
Because we put so much info into Facebook, their targeting data is extremely specific.
You may know exactly who your target market is, but you could find new or supplemental audiences that could be served by your company.
Facebook advertising gives you options to dig into an audience’s:
- Geography
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Connections
- Relationship Status
- Languages
- Education
- Workplaces
Using these, you can pinpoint similar audiences or even dig deeper into the demographics of your existing audience to truly understand their lives.
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