Considering that 100% of B2B buyers prefer a self-service buying process, and that 55% of B2B buyers rely on digital content when making purchasing decisions, marketers must be able to connect with buyers in meaningful ways.
The thought of humanizing your marketing content can seem counterintuitive . But even in this brave new world of Chat GPT, My AI, and dozens of others, the ability to connect emotionally with your buyers is something that artificial intelligence still hasn’t managed to successfully do.
While it may seem tempting to rely on tried-and-true methods of yesterday or to venture into the world of AI, the reality is that in today’s competitive market, it’s more important than ever that marketers take the time to add a “human touch” to their content.
The importance of humanizing the B2B content experience
“To humanize the B2B content experience is to reflect the human qualities of both buyers and sellers.” – Don Knapp, Associate Director of Content Marketing, Tendo Communications
Humanizing B2B marketing content primarily serves two very important purposes:
- For buyers, it shows that your business recognizes their needs and challenges, establishing an emotional connection and evoking trust.
- For brands, it reveals the human side of your company.
Top 5 Ways to humanize your content
Humanizing your content is all about authenticity and finding ways to connect with your buyers in an increasingly disconnected world. Doing that may seem daunting, but if you follow these five steps it makes creating content experiences and positive relationships with your buyers easier than you might think.
- Communicate your purpose and passion. What is your brand’s reason for existing? That purpose and passion—and showing the impact it can have on people’s lives—creates emotional impact.
- Be hyper-focused on your customers. What do your customers need? Your content should focus on addressing your customers’ pain points rather than company capabilities or product features and benefits.
- Let real people speak for your brand. Utilize customer voices, influencers, even spotlight your own employees. Putting an actual face behind content adds personality and connection.
- Inspire with storytelling. Don’t just throw a bunch of information at your customers, instead, utilize storytelling to illustrate how your company and solutions can help your customers.
- Show some personality. B2C brands have been successfully doing this for years, and B2B shouldn’t be afraid to take a page of the B2C marketing playbook. Be relatable, engaging and conversational with your content, and say goodbye to the days of dry and boring B2B content.
For more ways to humanize your B2B content, check out this infographic.
Humanizing Your Marketing Strategy
As you reflect on how to humanize your marketing strategy, we encourage you to take advantage of content provided through our Marketing Velocity campaigns. Ask yourself how you can not only utilize the content to your advantage, but how you can tweak the content to fit your company’s brand and voice. How can you connect with your customers authentically and differentiate your value proposition?
For more information on how to humanize your marketing content, I encourage you to check out the following sources that were used for this blog:
5 Ways to Humanize Your B2B Content MVC video presented by Don Knapp
Humanize your content to connect with buyers meaningfully infographic
Happy marketing!
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