The rate at which technology has evolved over the past few years has impacted every industry — especially marketing. Today, businesses are trying to find ways to leverage technology to reach more customers. Marketing automation, search engine optimization, business intelligence, chatbots, and voice search have become important topics for many marketers.
However, in a world where information is a commodity, you need to be more than a source of facts and figures. This is why it is more important than ever for marketers to understand, embrace, and incorporate empathy.
3 Ways to Gain & Incorporate Empathy Into Your Marketing
The good news is that empathy is something that can be learned. Here are three exercises you can use to cultivate your empathetic skills and incorporate them into the ways they engage with potential customers:
- Get face-to-face with the prospective client. Most marketing teams don’t get a lot of face time with current or potential customers, but their entire job is to create messaging and campaigns that resonate with these people. Taking time to actually sit down with a potential customer can be extremely valuable for marketers. It helps them understand what a “typical day” looks like for them. It provides insights into what really motivates them to make decisions, rather than guessing. Face-to-face conversations allow for the fullest interaction, and the closer you can get to one, the more effective you’ll be.
- Don’t be afraid to find out why you didn’t win the business. When it comes to knowing why a prospect didn’t buy from you, most marketers have to rely on insights from the sales team. However, salespeople don’t always get the real reason. Being a little further removed from the sales process often provides an opportunity to gain valuable insights. This is a valuable way marketing can play an active role in truly understanding the real reasons and motivations of why a prospective client didn’t buy from you.
- Consider what their real problem is. Here’s the difference between great companies and good companies: Great companies solve the real problems facing the customer. Think about Chick-fil-A versus a typical fast food restaurant. One provides a transactional experience, the other does everything they can to go above and beyond to make life easier and more enjoyable for the customer. Chick-fil-A understands that they’re doing more than providing people lunch. The real problem they are solving is making the act of eating more enjoyable and a less stressful part of life—and everything they do is centered around this objective.