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What is Empathy Marketing? The Complete Beginner’s Guide

What is Empathy Marketing? The Complete Beginner’s Guide

You have brushed up on best practices and changed the design, layout and day you publish your content, but these changes aren’t leading to sales. While data and tools constantly revolutionize the marketing world, they don’t always guarantee you’ll genuinely connect with your audience, a necessity to convert leads.

The only way to create authentic connections is to understand your customers – and then create content that shows them you know who you’re talking to.

Enter empathy marketing, the customer-centric marketing approach that allows you to tailor content to the needs and desires of your audience. It is not about overwhelming them with hype ads and social media posts, it is about creating assets that are truly valuable – content that addresses their most significant pain points, needs and motivations. So what is empathy marketing and how does it work? I’ve created a guide to break it down.

In this guide, you’ll find everything you need to know about empathy marketing and how to get started, including:

  • What empathy marketing is and why it’s important
  • How empathy marketing works
  • Practical tips for integrating empathy marketing into your content strategy

Read on so you can infuse empathy into your marketing and connect with your audience!

What is Empathy Marketing?

Empathy marketing is a marketing strategy that emphasizes the feelings and emotions of your audience and customers. For this type of marketing to work, you have to be on board with the slow burn because empathy marketing isn’t about promoting the features of your service or product. You want to connect with your audience and become a part of their lives for the long haul.

This means showing you understand what they need, what concerns them, what they believe in. This comes out in content that addresses the things that annoy, scare, inspire, delight and challenge them.

Eggs with faces that have been drawn with markers. It is important to acknowledge the feelings of your customers

Why Is Empathy Marketing Important?

When you incorporate empathy marketing into your strategy, you are recognizing that customers do not make rational purchasing decisions. This gives you access to a number of benefits that will help your brand achieve both its marketing and business goals.

  • Build Trust: By appealing to a customer’s feelings, you are able to build a trust that traditional marketing simply cannot make. At a time where consumers’ confidence in brands and companies is falling, trust is the new marketing currency.
  • Enhance the Customer Experience: When you know the issues your customers deal with, you are better positioned to create services, products and experiences that genuinely solve their problems. This provides customers with an overall experience that is more satisfying.
  • Differentiation: Showing true concern for customers will allow you to stand out within competitive marketplaces. For consumers looking to engage in interactions that are personalized and meaningful, you will be an appealing choice.
  • Sustainability: Customers want brands to be more empathetic, and are not changing their minds about this any time soon. As customers seek brands that align with their beliefs and values, they are hoping more companies prioritize genuine engagement. This trend can positively contribute to your brand’s reputation and continued success.

To get these benefits, all it takes is a shift in your perspective from that of your business needs to how your business or brand can help potential customers accomplish their goals.

How Empathy Marketing Works

Ushering empathy into your marketing will connect your brand with your audience on a deep emotional level. It takes time, but once you establish a genuine connection, you’ll know exactly what to do and say to motivate them to take action.

Understand Your Audience

Empathy marketing starts with a comprehensive understanding of who you are talking to. This means research your customers thoroughly, getting details such as their preferences, habits, pain points and demographics (i.e. age, income, location, religion, etc).

Identify Emotions & Pain Points

You can promote a deodorant that “Keeps you fresh all day long,” or you can promote a deodorant that “Keeps you feeling confident enough to raise your hand in any meeting.” The pain point is the embarrassment that comes from having musty armpits and pit stains.

When you know your customers’ struggles, fears and desires, you can incorporate those feelings into your marketing language, messaging and visual elements as well.

Engage with Personalized Communication

Once you know the specific issues of your audience, you can mold your messaging for each of your audience segments.

Let’s say one of your customer segments has a big problem staying fresh all day long, your messaging can talk about deodorant reapplication. Another segment may prioritize using organic deodorant, so speak to them about the natural ingredients in your product and how they are sustainably sourced.

Deliver Relevant Content

Empowered with a wealth of information about your audience, you build trust by providing content that improves their lives because it directly addresses the pain points you know they are dealing with. This includes, blogs, videos, newsletters, case studies, interviews, social media updates, and more.

Empathy Marketing Tips

Here are a few practical ways to begin going beyond simple promotional materials to deliver insightful content.

Look for Feedback

Actively looking for and listening to customer feedback will do wonders for your marketing. Monitor social media, conduct surveys, ask customers for direct feedback and take a look at your online reviews, paying attention to the emotions, language and issues your customers are expressing. This will help you get in the mindset of your customers; just try not to take what you’re hearing and seeing personally. While we all know that is easier said than done, it is worth it to put your emotions aside to provide a better service or product to serve your customers.

If you don’t have your own data to look through, look at what customers are saying about brands in your industry who have the same audience and customers as you.

Build Buyer Personas

Developing detailed buyer personas breathes humanity into customers. This is a great thing because it’s easy to see them as just another sale if you are not careful. Along with demographics, your buyer persona should include your audience’s dreams, fears, beliefs, goals, favorite foods and anything else you can think of.

Give your personas a name too, because people have names.

Create Empathy Maps

An empathy map is all about getting into your customers heads and going on the journey they embark on when interacting with your brand. Imagine their experience with your brand or follow a real-life customer’s actions from first knowing about your brand to making a purchase. These touch points will reveal how easy, difficult, satisfying or frustrating it is to engage with your brand.

Take the time to go through each step, noting how a customer feels and what they think at each touch point. You will have an actual guide for what content, solutions and improvements can be implemented in places where the journey gets a bit bumpy.

Educate & Solve Problems

Selling products is a part of your business, but don’t let it be all of your business. Instead of focusing solely on promoting your products, create content that shows how the products and services you sell successfully address the specific challenges and aspirations of your audience.

Sticking with the deodorant example, you can:

  • share lifestyle advice on preventing sweat and odor via clothing choices, hygiene and diet
  • tailor content for each season, writing summer-themed content that focuses on smelling great in intense heat or winter content that addresses the challenges of staying fresh wearing heavy sweaters and coats
  • highlight customers who have used your deodorant in ways you never thought about
  • shoot how-to videos showing effective application techniques in different situations, such as high-stress work presentations, workouts and nights out
  • provide an extra strength version of your deodorant for athletes and highly active people
  • offer discounts to people who reapply at least 3 times a day or have families (and therefore must purchase more deodorant than average)

Be Transparent & Don’t Lie

Be clear about what you believe in, your company’s mission, the impact you hope to make and your dedication to serving your customers. A customer is more likely to trust and support your brand when they see your commitment to aligning with their values.

With that in mind, what happens if you make a mistake? Well, be honest about it. Don’t’ beat yourself up over it either, but you can be upfront, apologize and make amends. Customers (who are humans) will see your humanity, which in turn will strengthen your bond. There is no need to pretend you don’t have flaws, we all know you do, and we love you for it.

Get Started with Empathy Marketing Today

When you put the perspectives of your customers in front of your own, your approach to content will naturally change, resulting in content they look forward to. If you want to grow your audience and build loyalty, empathy marketing is the way to go about it.

Putting your customer first shows you see their humanity and care about their lives more than making a sale, which is a big deal. People buy from and want to work with likeable people and brands they vibe with or believe understand them, so be that person or brand.

There’s an infinite amount of time to hype up your services and products once you establish a relationship. However, when empathy marketing is done well, your brand will be magnetic and the people you draw in will toot your horn for you.