With all the marketing automation and scheduling tools at your disposal, it is now much easier and more convenient to manage digital marketing campaigns. However, we must keep in mind our customers are human and we need to cultivate trust and deeper relationships with them to retain their business.

We don’t want to simply go through the motions of a purely transactional deal and easily lose clients to the competition when the latter drops prices. Many B2B companies who are in industries that are not considered “cool” or “sexy” fail to realize that purchasing decisions are not made by logic alone. They often do not see the value of cultivating engagement through blogs, digital content or social media. Behind each company are people who are drawn to real connections with brands or service providers. People do business with people they like and trust. These people will be your staunchest cheerleaders, and they will be key to growing your business.

Here are some tactics for how you can humanize your digital marketing strategy.

1. Be Genuinely Curious About Your Customers

Have you ever stopped to think who your customers really are? What motivates them? What keeps them up at night? The most successful businesses listen more than they talk. While automation tools are a great time-saver to manage social media engagements, it can also make your company seem distant and cold. Take time to look at your followers’ profiles. What do they talk about with their peers? Are there pain points in their business that you can help them solve? Don’t be afraid to reach out and offer assistance.

Create buyer personas so you can easily visualize the person on the other side of the screen. If you can develop more personalized messages to your identified target segments, you will have a higher success rate of closing a sale.

Another useful tool in getting to know your potential customers is Twitter chats. Choose chats that are relevant to your business. The great thing about it is that it is real-time engagement. You get the opportunity learn new things about the industry and meet new prospects. Identify a hashtag and promote it across all platforms weeks before the scheduled chat.
 

2. Drop the Jargon and Speak Their Language

Avoid writing as if you were developing a company brochure. Though there are no hard and fast rules, the style you adopt must be in a conversational tone that is clear, accessible and friendly.

Do make sure you speak in a consistent voice to avoid disjointed communications among various content creators. One way to achieve this is to develop an editorial style guide aim for a style guide that is comprehensive yet usable for your writers. Most style guides include directions on spelling, tone of voice, type of graphics and formatting, and sourcing of content.

Converse in a manner and tone that your customers understand. After all, the reason you are developing content in the first place is to benefit them and to establish your company as a partner to realize their goals and objectives.
 

3. Respond Promptly and Have Real Conversations With Readers and Followers

While most companies are tempted to jump into the newest digital trend, don’t set up a social media company profile unless you have thought about who among your team can manage these platforms and serve as the community manager for the long haul. Nothing reflects worse on your organization than abandoned accounts that seem as if your company has already gone out of business. Set up a schedule where you periodically check messages. While it’s best to respond immediately to any concern, smaller companies just don’t have the manpower to do so. The next best thing is to be consistent so that customers will know when to expect a response.

Facebook and Twitter have evolved to become an emergent platform for providing customer support and responding to inquiries. According to a Nielsen social media report, as much as a third of customers prefer “social care” versus phone conversations.

Comments on blogs and social media platforms can also be a goldmine of future content topics. If certain questions or comments arise again and again, it can be a new topic for your next article or whitepaper.
 

4. Introduce the People Behind Your Team

Arguably, the most valuable asset of any company are the people behind it. Show your customers that you are proud of your team and that they too should trust them to deliver on, if not exceed, your company’s promises

Seeing real faces and a little personality build trust with potential clients and also increase the likelihood of repeat business. Most clients want to hear your story and your people are an important part of it. It makes you more relatable and helps you stand out from the competition. You can even go further and share pictures of what a typical day in your office is like. Show photos of company socials such as outings, events or parties.

Consider including social media links of your team’s personal accounts. Most professionals now have LinkedIn, Twitter or Instagram. Linking to those accounts can be a fantastic way to let current and potential clients connect with them. But do this only if your employees are diligent in maintaining a professional persona online. You don’t want your company to be caught up in some political propaganda or very controversial issues that might tarnish its reputation.

Your company executive team can also act as be the top brand evangelists through their social media posts. Help them plan content that provides value to the target audience. Do they have business insights that they can share? Have they read books that they can recommend? Did they have interesting quotes from speaking engagements? Are they involved in the community? You might not have Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos heading your company, but your leaders will have relevant opinions about their specific industry. A word of warning though – make sure that these posts come across as authentic. Fake it ‘til you make it isn’t sound advice if your goal is to genuine engagement.

Your audience wants to grow with you. Even recounting failures and how the company overcame them will endear you to your readers. They want to root for you when you face challenges and also celebrate your wins and successes. This emotional investment will assure you of a loyal tribe that will be with you in the long run.

Remember, emotion creates motion. It is what motivates and drives your customers and it has a huge influence in their decision-making process. How you make them feel will determine whether they will deem you a good fit for their business. On paper, you may have the perfect product or service but at the end of the day, the most enduring companies are those that can demonstrate a visceral connection to their customers. It is when they become part of your story that they will be invested in your success.

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