In B2B marketing, it’s easy to forget that your audience isn’t just an industry, company, product or service. In reality, your audience is filled with people. Real, living, breathing, dog-walking, wine drinking, 90-day-Fiancé watching, yoga-practicing people. Well, they may also be cat-owning, beer drinking, kickball playing people too… But you get my point. While B2B marketing has different nuances than B2C, at the end of the day, it’s real humans who are reading your copy, filling out your forms, and paying your invoices.
Traditionally, B2B marketing has been more formal and less personal. I’m sure you can name plenty of examples of terrible ad copy and long-winded content created for the B2B space. All too often, B2B marketers forget about the people and personas behind their 'prospects'.
So how do you make your marketing more human? I've compiled a few strategies that will help you attract and convert the people that make up your target audience.
Add Conversational Marketing to Your Mix
One of the best ways to start engaging your consumers on a more personal level is through conversational marketing. Rather than forcing your contacts to go through one-way communications like forms or emails, set up chatbots to engage with your website visitors. People love to communicate through messaging. It’s become second nature for most people. From texts, to facebook messenger, and countless other apps, people are used to engaging in conversations. The proof is in the pudding… HubSpot attracted 20% more qualified leads just by adding live chat to their website. They believe in this method so much, they offer their chatbot for free.
Be a Storyteller
Stories help to create a human connection and create empathy, so it’s no surprise that the best marketers use storytelling to build their brand and improve their conversions. So many businesses are missing out on story telling. Stories help build deeper and stronger connections with their readers (your customers) and they help to make your brand more human. Want to get started? Find your characters, build their challenges and tell the solution. Your followers will thank you with their budget and loyalty.
Use Social Proof
Influencer marketing is popular for a reason. I know I’ve made plenty of purchases based on friend’s recommendations, most recently my Roomba (best investment I’ve made in a while!). But the truth of the matter is, we trust other’s opinions. Incorporating social proof in your strategy is easy. Some ideas to get you started:
- Add your client’s and partners logos to your website (with their permission of course)
- Share your customer’s success stories in Case Studies
- Ask for quotes from your customers to add to your website. Video testimonials are great, engaging content too
Don’t forget to Engage on Social Media
B2C brands tend to be great at engaging with their audience on social. The best brands add humor, ask questions, and respond to their followers and fans. They don’t just use social to share their own content, they use it as another channel to communicate with their customers. Start interacting on social today.
The best marketing is all about the experience that you give to your audience. Take a few plays out of the B2C playbook. The B2B world has a lot of room for growth and improvements when it comes to communicating with our audiences.
Make your marketing more human. After all, Businesses ARE people too.
Leave a Reply