Business-to-business or B2B marketing has long been thought to require a more serious approach than the business-to-consumer or B2C model. You are trying to convey the highest form of credibility and professionalism when closing a business deal. Therefore, it’s reasonable to keep your language formal and activities structured to secure a long-term partnership that generates favorable outcomes.
Due to the extreme focus on formality when creating their B2B marketing strategies, many marketers make the mistake of being too impersonal in their approach. Unfortunately, this leads to a lack of trust between the two parties, which can negatively affect the business relationship down the line.
Human Connection: The Key to Bridging the Gap
It is important to remember that real people are behind every business transaction. So, adding a human touch to your marketing efforts can mean the difference between gaining a sale and losing business.
Humanizing your brand builds trust and establishes a deeper connection with your prospects and audience. Incorporating the human touch into your B2B digital marketing strategies can differentiate your company from competitors and foster business relationships that produce positive returns.
Keep reading if you want to know our top tips on humanizing a brand to improve customer experience and your bottom line.
4 Tips on How To Humanize Your Brand
When creating your communications, you must balance maintaining a professional tone and infusing humanizing elements into your B2B marketing strategies. This remains true even when interacting with formal institutions such as those in the medical and educational sectors. This is because you are still communicating with people at the end of the day. Therefore, adopting an approach that emphasizes the human aspects of your brand can be very effective.
Consider implementing the following tips to humanize your B2B digital marketing strategies successfully:
Diversify Your Channels
With over 700 million users worldwide, including many decision-makers and influencers, LinkedIn provides a unique opportunity for B2B brands to reach the right people at the right time. For this reason, LinkedIn has been the go-to channel for companies that wish to connect with potential clients meaningfully. But while LinkedIn is an excellent platform for marketers to amplify their brand presence and boost sales, it should not be the only medium that businesses invest time and resources into. Instead, they must create B2B content marketing strategies for various channels to get the best results.
Humans consume content in different ways depending on the way they feel. Your target audience could use LinkedIn to grow their professional network. Still, they are most likely on other platforms, such as Instagram or TikTok, to find entertainment after a long day at work.
Think of your prospects as more than just a business opportunity but as people with lives outside their jobs. This is a simple but significant way of humanizing a brand.
Insert Humor in Your Content
Humor in marketing is a powerful tool that allows brands to stand out. It adds personality to social media campaigns, making them more memorable and impactful. However, incorporating humor into B2B content can be challenging in business-to-business transactions, as the audience is typically more serious and focused on the bottom line. But when done correctly, humor is highly effective in grabbing attention and building brand awareness.
Here are the most effective ways to incorporate humor in marketing:
• Use clever wordplay on social media posts.
• Create a parody of a well-known industry trend.
• Poke fun at a common pain point.
• Use puns in the email subject lines and headlines.
• Incorporate animated GIFs into your B2B email marketing campaigns.
However, adding humor to your B2B digital marketing strategies is a double-edged sword. Posting the wrong joke at the wrong time will make your company look amateur and incompetent.
One of the biggest things to avoid in your B2B content marketing efforts is making insensitive or offensive jokes. This can damage your brand’s reputation and backlash. Another situation to avoid is using humor in cases where it’s not appropriate. For example, if there’s a serious issue happening in the world, B2B brands that make light of the situation can come across as tone-deaf and insensitive.
Humor is only effective in humanizing a brand when done right. So, it pays to be perceptive. It is crucial to recognize the correct times to include humor and when it’s better to be serious.
Showcase the People Behind the Scenes
An excellent way to humanize your brand in your B2B marketing strategies is to remind your target audience that your business is not just a faceless entity. Instead, it is run by people who care about their work and clients.
Give your business and human identity by featuring employee profiles on your website or social media. This helps build familiarity and lets potential clients learn about the expertise and experience of each team member, which can drive more interest in your services.
Additionally, posting behind-the-scenes photos that capture moments of fun and camaraderie helps showcase a positive and enjoyable work environment, making B2B brands more approachable.
The goal is to shift your B2B content marketing focus from products to your team – your brand’s greatest asset.
Personalize Communication
Customers are bombarded with a plethora of marketing messages every day. As a result, they have become more selective about the content they consume and are more likely to engage with brands that deliver personalized messages that are relevant to their needs and interests.
When you personalize content in your inbound marketing, you show your potential clients that you understand their pain points and display your commitment to delivering solutions that address their needs.
There are several ways to personalize content when you humanize your brand, which include:
• Addressing prospects by name: Calling your potential client by their first name allows you to address them in a more individualized way. You can use this in B2B email marketing since most emailing software will enable you to easily personalize content in the subject line and body of the message.
• Hyper-targeted advertising: Segmenting your audience based on their interests, behavior and demographics enables you to create targeted campaigns that resonate with them. This approach increases the likelihood of converting prospects into customers.
• Website personalization: This is the process of tailoring a website’s content and user experience to meet the unique needs of individual users. You can achieve it through various techniques, including using cookies and other tracking technologies to gather data about a user’s location and behavior on the site.
Due to the highly competitive B2B landscape, personalization in inbound marketing is no longer an option but a requirement for success.
Emerging Trends in B2B Marketing
Like everything in the digital space, B2B marketing constantly evolves. Therefore, businesses must stay on top of emerging trends in B2B marketing to remain competitive and drive continuous growth.
Aside from adding a human touch to your strategies, make sure to keep your eyes on the following trends in B2B marketing to improve customer experience and stay ahead of the curve:
• Podcasts as a marketing channel: According to Edison Research, podcast listening has more than doubled since 2014. Due to the massive increase in interest, many companies are looking into podcast marketing to get in front of their target audience.
• Producing more video content: Video marketing continues to be a priority for many business owners. A study by Wyzowl discovered that 92% of marketers consider video content an “important” asset in their marketing efforts.
• Investing more in content: Content Marketing Institute reports that 56% of B2B companies are investing more in content creation to help them stand out in the increasingly competitive business-to-business landscape.
• Using storytelling in campaigns: B2B decision-makers don’t choose products based purely on logic. Since they are humans, there’s emotion involved as well. For this reason, more B2B firms are using storytelling to help their offerings stand out. According to Search Engine Watch, businesses that incorporated storytelling in their marketing efforts have seen a 30% increase in conversions.
Adapt a Human Approach With the Help of Thrive’s Marketing Experts
In today’s fast-paced world, connecting with your audience on a human level is more critical than ever. By knowing how to humanize your brand and adapting a personal approach, you can build stronger relationships with your prospects, leading to long-lasting partnerships and the best possible business outcomes.
Let Thrive’s marketing experts help you create a digital marketing strategy that resonates with your target audience and drives results for your company.
Contact us today.
