I love a good story. It creates context for our relationships. This short video made by Disney is a great example of what storytelling can do for your brand. It creates an incredible way for us to connect. But it also does something that I think we often overlook. It makes us human. In today’s marketplace we are inundated with content. The famous quote from Bill Gates stating that content would indeed rule and be the single most important aspect of the internet has for the most part, come true. As marketers we have taken the baton and run with it. We’re producing content at a breakneck pace, and in large part, it’s content that someone, somewhere has already written. But does it humanize us?
This problem isn’t new. For over a decade, marketers have been trying to determine how to make our content stand apart. We’ve written from different perspectives, we’ve wrapped it in creative call-to-actions and tried to engage our audience explaining why our content is more unique and valuable than the other guys. So how do we stand apart? How does our content rise above the rest?
We need to think differently. We need to start being human. Let’s imagine that all the web’s content is represented by a city. What brings that city to life? It’s people. When we think of our hometown, we think in context of our personal relationships and experiences. We don’t think of the data (i.e. population or square miles). We think of the high school we went to and the crushes we had. We think of our first job and how tough the manager was. These stories provide the context for the city.
If we recognize that storytelling humanizes us and is a vital ingredient to our marketing efforts, how do we incorporate it into our marketing automation processes?
“But the farmer has a major advantage over the hunter. While the hunters must go into new territories each day to stalk their prey, farmers stay in one place, planting new seeds and reaping the fruits of their efforts on the same ground they have toiled over already. In return, the land they till becomes infinitely more valuable because it can consistently reap a harvest without the hits and misses of hunting.”
You’ve likely heard the phrase lead nurturing? It’s marketing speak for building relationships. It’s staying in one place, listening to your customers and adding value by meeting their needs at each stage of the buying journey. But we can’t accomplish this by trying to “hunt for sales”, this must be done by building trust over time, adding value at each step.
“Several studies back up the fact that no matter who your customers are (B2B or B2C), there’s a high price to pay for delivering a poor customer experience. The thing is, customer experience is really based on how your customers feel. And one of the best ways to make them feel better about the experience is to listen them, understand their concerns, and deliver empathetic service across multiple touchpoints.”
So delivering a positive customer experience is more than simply knowing what kind of product they use. It’s having knowledge about how and why they use it. If you sell shampoo, you need to know what kind of hair they have, why they chose the shampoo, then deliver value around the entire experience. What do they need before, during and after they shampoo their hair? This information helps create customer empathy. When we deliver this kind of content via our automation processes, it will show that we have listened and seek to provide real value along the way.
“Big data provides great information about customers’ interests, personal and professional networks, location, and many other characteristics. But creating meaningful experiences requires us to get more personal than just mining data. One of my least favorite expressions is, “It’s not personal; it’s only business.”
This is where the rubber meets the road. Data gives us a limited view of our customers. It shows us open rates, but doesn’t reveal intent. It shows us downloads, but doesn’t indicate purpose. We must take the additional step to “micro-mine” the data. How do we do that? We must be curious. We must gather valuable insights. What are your customers interests, values and opinions? “Data storytellers” (or analysts) have the unique ability to reveal information that do reveal incredibly accurate stories about our audience. Gathering and listening to these stories will help us further humanize our content and create experiences that are meaningful and personal.
In order to humanize our marketing automation efforts we must critically look at each interaction during the customer experience as it relates to our communications and determine how we humanize it. Here are a few thoughts to get you started.
This is not an easy task. It takes an immense amount of time to walk in the shoes of your customer. From the moment they discover the need, all the way through the moment their need is met, and beyond. But just as any relationship takes time to develop, so does automating your marketing. Marketing Automation is still relatively new. While the systems are vast, there is a simple philosophy that your team should adhere to before generating the campaigns, emails and landing pages that will capture your audience’s attention. It’s the philosophy of making every interaction human.
This article was originally published at Mautic.org, by author J. Seevers.
Recent Comments