Why Empathy is so Important for Successful Marketing

Every human decision depends on emotion. It would be foolish to think otherwise. In fact, your decision about whether you agree or disagree with that statement was because of how you felt reading it. Whatever your product, understanding your customer’s emotional motivators helps you to understand their journey, and where you fit into that journey.

Empathetic marketing is how you connect to that emotional state of mind and convert this human feeling into stable customer relationships. While authenticity and honesty are essential in marketing (just read what we have to say about brand storytelling , these characteristics are owned by the brand itself. In contrast, a brand’s empathy is something that is offered. Putting yourself in your customer’s shoes and identifying with their needs and situation.

The most basic method brands use to incorporate empathy is to create customer personas. These help to identify customer traits and needs for more effective targeting. But to get to the heart of the customer, you need to ask what they truly value, rather than assume what will sell and what won’t.

Entering into a conversation with an empathetic mindset helps to build an understanding of the audience better than KPIs and tracking content performance. MVA prides itself in authentic and emotional product branding and marketing. Through experiential marketing, we talk to real people at real locations to understand our client’s customer opinion and through that we captivated the masses with relatable stories that were rooted in an empathetic understanding of the community.

Empathetic marketing needs open-ended questions, time for one-on-one conversation and the readiness to accept negative feedback. When talking to customers, listen and don’t interrupt and note down not just what they say, but how they say it too. Whatever the results may be, hold yourself accountable and develop the conversation to the digital sphere with online discussions and lead nurturing exercises.

By connecting emotionally to a brand’s customer, a lasting competitive advantage can be achieved, bringing in more sales, better brand perspectives, more ROI and improved revenue. From the customer’s perspective, the best marketing doesn’t just feel like it’s helping – it is helping.