CMO, The 20. There are two consistent elements of work which bring me great joy: building relationships and making things grow.
Getty
How you define your marketing campaign strategy impacts how you implement it. It can be easy to split your campaign into business-to-business (B2B) or business-to-consumer (B2C), but this distinction can hurt you if you’re not careful. Not every consumer is going to be the same, and not every decision is rational. In the automation age, your marketing strategy needs to be more human-oriented than ever.
When you sell to a consumer or to a business, there is a person on the other end who has decided to buy something. Thinking in abstracts and transactions can help you get started and is a way to measure success. But this isn’t enough for you to keep succeeding once you get the basics down.
You need to humanize your marketing approach. Stop focusing on B2B or B2C exclusively, and focus on how to make the relationship human-to-human (H2H) instead. It may have become a buzzword, but the underlying principle is essential to take your marketing to the next level. The business aspect is there to help you make informed decisions. Traditional marketing principles set the stage, but you still have to perform on it.
Humanizing Your Marketing
Humans are social animals. We don’t just want to be sold something; we want to feel we made the decision to buy it. We want to feel we made the right choice and that our choice mattered.
Our emotions and our preconceptions bleed into our logical thinking. You can try to operate entirely on logic, but something is going to be colored by your mental state at some point in the process. A fact that feels combative is often perceived as a lie. The right campaign on the wrong day is the same.
H2H is about transcending the traditional transactional model and reconnecting with the person at the other end of your campaign. It’s about forging relationships instead of just flooding inboxes. A business doesn’t make a decision; the people there do, and people are more than just demographics or a sales opportunities.
Humanizing B2B And B2C
The move to H2H isn’t about just throwing out B2B or B2C. You start with a simple model, and as you learn how all the pieces work together, you apply them in new and novel ways. Putting chocolate in a savory dish may sound disgusting, but a touch in chili adds complexity and richness when done right. Don’t throw out what’s worked so far, but help it to grow and mature in new directions.
H2H doesn’t replace B2B or B2C; it rises above them. You still need to know who you’re targeting and how, but you need to focus on establishing a relationship. When you grow the standard business-client relationship into something more, you add complexity and depth that isn’t strictly quantifiable. A recipe may call for a tomato, but it can’t tell you how sour or sweet it needs to be. That comes with experience and personal taste.
While the relationship is ultimately founded on the intent for a transaction, it becomes more. You want to care about your clients, and you want them to care about you. It’s still business, but by growing the human side of it, you protect both parties. A customer your business cares about will get better service, and a client who feels safe and comfortable with you is going to be less inclined to shop around. It’s not foolproof, but neither is business.
Transcending The Transactional
The hardest step to this process is often the first leap of faith past transactional sales. A transaction is easy. It’s comfortable. It can be measured and quantified. A relationship? Not so much. Things get messy and weird, and things change. You have to take a leap of faith at some point, or you’re just doing the same thing over and over without growing.
A transaction is never as easy as it seems. Do people buy your product because it’s the best or because it feels good? Are your clients using your offering because it’s cheap or because it’s what they’re used to? Even though the cause won’t impact your metrics for the number of transactions, it impacts how you do business.
Reaching out on a more individualized level can help you target nontraditional buyers. IT is magic to most companies. The difference between you looking like a snake oil salesperson and Merlin is going to boil down to their perception of your relationship. Do they think you’re trying to sell them something for a quick buck, or do they trust you to help their business grow? You set the stage for the narrative, but it also has to be real.
Fostering Human-Oriented Campaigns
Make your campaign honest. What are you selling, and why does it fit your client? Build a narrative with them. Don’t be a stereotypical used car salesperson pushing a sale in every sentence or email; give them the seeds of value for your brand, and help them grow it. What does your service do to help them as both a client and as a person? There’s someone sitting at the other end, and if the process doesn’t feel genuine, it can undo the trust you’ve built.
H2H isn’t a panacea for marketing woes, but it can help you get leads that would have slipped away otherwise. It can help you salvage clients you thought you’d lose. Don’t supplant your other marketing efforts; augment them. See your clients as more than just faceless demographic swatches. Treat them as more than just email addresses on the list. See them as the people they are.
A relationship is founded on trust and communication. Your clients need to trust you, and you need to communicate with them. People make mistakes and have misunderstandings, but how you handle them can make the difference between ruining a relationship and strengthening it. You can be that difference for your company.
Forbes Communications Council is an invitation-only community for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Do I qualify?
