For today’s B2B brands, there is a key element to help you forge strong connections with your customers. Humans.
As a student dietitian, I observed my mentor consult a client about making lifestyle changes to manage his blood sugar levels. And I judged her. Because she made no effort to form a connection with him and at the end of the session, handed him a sheet of paper with three goals to achieve by their next session – goals that she set without his input. I thought to myself, “Yes, well good luck with that one!”.
Are your customers feeling the same as the pre-diabetic client that my mentor consulted? Are they not connecting with your content? The ultimate goal of creating content is to connect customers with your brand. It’s about dialing down the marketing buzz words and instead, building rapport through carefully-crafted prose.
Human connection and profit can coexist
So, is human connection the key to marketing? Mark Viden runs the branding and marketing show at Dignity Health, a community care provider based in the United States and led the heart-warming Hello Human Kindness campaign. With human connection at the heart of its mission, it aimed to unleash the healing power of humanity to those needing healthcare. Isn’t that nice?
Healthy connections
As a health professional, I never imagined that I would end up working with Copenhagen-based agency, cylindr, and writing technical content for half a dozen B2B companies, including the world’s leading supplier of cement manufacturing equipment. I’m looking forward to the day that a cement production-related question comes up in pub trivia!
Personally, I value making meaningful human connections because I get a kick out of it. It might sound a bit daggy*, but it’s what gives me the warm and fuzzies. And it’s this particular ‘care factor’ that leads to powerful content that connects your brand with your customers.
Create emotional bonds
To connect customers with your brand, make them the center of your marketing strategy and nurture them like you would a friend. A good friendship is born out of trust, honesty and a sense of connectedness that can feel so intense, you start wondering if you were besties in a past life. And this is exactly what your relationship with a customer aspires to achieve. Where both parties have a deep-seated level of trust in each other’s capabilities, but are also not afraid to speak the truth.
For me, an authentic relationship really helps me feel connected – to both clients and co-workers. Nothing forges a bond like the shared experience of laughing so hard that you need to take huge gulps of air to compensate for the hilarity that just knocked the wind out of you.
Create the same intensity of emotion with your audience; it will make them feel truly engaged with your content – and with your brand.
* In Australia and New Zealand, ‘daggy’ is an affectionate way of describing something that is uncool, but comfortably so.