Is your marketing strategy feeling it?

We all know that people have gone through a traumatic year… like jarringly intense, life and worldview changing. As such, what we are trying to accomplish in our marketing efforts is drastically different today than it was a year ago. We all approach our lives differently (to varying degrees).

None of this is new, I know, but have you stopped to really consider where your customers are in this moment? Has your messaging, marketing and even service offering repertoire evolved to match their needs? There have never been more opportunities to reach customers; yet reaching them has never been more challenging.

Empathy is the new “authenticity” and that means you need to feel what your target audience feels and think what they think. To succeed, as marketers and business owners, we must embrace empathy on every level with every customer. Consumers are more sophisticated than ever and have access to more information and more options. We’ve moved from traditional advertising to social media, content marketing, influencer marketing and beyond.
 

Hello? Hello?

And so, as there are more and more ways to talk to and connect with customers, we have to wonder are they really listening? Are they engaging?

But you can’t guess the answers to these questions. You need to understand the customer’s motivation (what they want), what they are hoping to accomplish and what stands in their way. And then you need to make sure that what you are providing them is aligned with what they are seeking and meeting them exactly where they are.

This requires letting go of your assumptions and putting yourself in their place. And you can’t fake it without coming off as disingenuous or like a big sap. If you are going to show empathy, you need to understand what to be empathetic about. Consumers are looking for brands that get where they are and what they need.

How does one have an empathetic tone?

Remember that the best marketing and sales don’t feel like marketing and sales at all. It feels like helping — and that’s because it is.

And since empathy is defined as putting yourself in another person’s shoes, it’s important to not just make educated guesses. No marketer will be able to create a campaign that truly resonates with their audience if they don’t know what it’s like to be them

… enter RESEARCH!
 

How Kinetic Can Help

Kinetic backs you up with a team of researchers that guide you to real, conclusive results. We provide research marketing through primary research (one-on-one interviews and focus groups) and market and user experience research. We also assist clients by conducting Google review analysis — and while this is typically considered a reputation management effort, there is also real value in gleaning insights about your consumer base by reading and synthesizing your business’s reviews.  

We ask your clients or customers what they are trying to accomplish and what is making it difficult for them to achieve their goals? We know an empathetic company will try to take “the hard” away from them. And this strategy matters because often people don’t even know what it is they actually need or want — but they can articulate what is hard. And once you really understand what a “day in the life” of your customer is, you will be able to fill in the gaps with your offerings as a company, organization or brand.

In fact, our team recently accepted a primary research grant to develop a report, landing page and email series depicting the experience of Montana seniors in congregate living over the last year through nearly 20 one-on-one interviews with seniors, their family members and healthcare professionals to glean a more complete picture of what Senior Care in the Age of COVID-19 was really like for the people who lived it.

We also have worked with clients such as EBMS and Frontier Asset Management to help them differentiate themselves from the competition through research and empathy-based marketing tactics.

We get into the minds and hearts of the people our clients are seeking to connect with, to execute the best brand and content customized to their audiences. Understanding a consumer’s wants, needs and challenges will truly set your marketing campaigns apart and help your business innovate and pull ahead. Creating a connection from brand to consumer using empathy translates into real and tangible marketing success.

Are you currently using empathy in your marketing efforts? Kinetic is here to help!

Please reach out — we’d love to hear from you!