Being human in your marketing can reap great rewards

Here we’re going to look at being human in your marketing can reap great rewards and improve your marketing success.

TRANSCRIPT

Now, you might wonder what it is that I mean by being human in your marketing, and it kind of stems from a discussion I had with a potential client yesterday, and I’ll come onto that in a few minutes.

But what I see in a lot of marketing is boring, corporate, almost in-human organisational approach to reaching people and trying to convince them to become customers.

People like doing business with people – even online

But what I’ve discovered over the last few years is that even in a transactional business such as Amazon, for example, or many online retailers where you’re not actually conversing with somebody, people still like to feel that they’re doing business with someone.

And that’s why you’ll often see when you buy something from any of these online retailers, a little card in there say, “Packed by X.” And, sometimes, they’ll have a little photograph on there and his little signature, etc. It’s a great way of putting a human face to an otherwise faceless organization. Because whether we like it or not, people really, really do like to do business with people.

We are sociable creatures, and being human in your marketing will help make sales that little bit easier.  It’s great if we can have a discussion with somebody or feel like we’re having a discussion or relationship with somebody when we’re buying things, when we’re parting with our money, when we’re actually giving our trust to somebody and say, “I trust you to deliver X. Here’s my money.”

So there’s a few things that you can do to try and get this across in your business, and the first one is, in your marketing, are you putting any kind of humanity in your marketing or is it boring, bland, and faceless?

Use photographs – simple but effective

And I mean faceless because when I started a training business 15 years ago, a lot of people were having their photographs put on their business cards. It was brilliant because when you went to a networking event and you went away, that card, that photograph was still there, and you could remember who they are and, most of the time, you can remember having a chat with them.

Most of the other business cards that didn’t have their face on the cards were – when you get back, you think, “Okay. Don’t remember having a chat with him.” And especially, sometimes, if they don’t have what they do on their card – just got their company name, their position, and their contact details – then there’s no context.

So having your photograph on a business card, especially if you do a lot of networking, can actually be a very, very good way of creating, of engendering some kind of relationship trust even at a very, very low level.

Put real people on your website

Another thing you might want to ask yourself is are you putting any of your staff or key people on your website?

Now, I see so many websites – of course, that’s the job that I do – where there’s near zero human element to their website.

Lots of pretty stock photographs, but when you try finding out a little bit more about the people behind the business, there’s nothing there. It makes me wonder whether these people genuinely want a relationship, or they just want to believe that by having a pretty website and telling me all about the wonderful things they think they can do, you’re just simply going to buy from them.

So here’s a few ideas for you to maybe work on this in your marketing and particularly on your website going forward.

First of all, make your business look like there are actual humans who work there.

Don’t have a website where there’s just no one on it. If you’ve got some – a named list of key people, have some photographs. Even better still, have potentially a video where they introduce themselves.

And remember to smile 🙂

Not only that, you need to have people smiling. To be honest, I’m not a fan of dealing with people who just have a photograph that looks like this. This is not the 1890s. We are allowed to smile these days and, to be honest, a smile is a great way of engendering trust, and it makes you come across as far more personable. So, smile. It is allowed.

Another key thing you might consider also is if you are going to have this stuff about people on your website, make sure that you put things in there which means that they have a life outside work. Again, people want to do business with people, want to do business with real human beings, not just robots who go to work and seem to do nothing else. If people have outside interests, put it down.

And, finally, be friendly. Look friendly but look businesslike, that’s appropriate to your business.  Being human in your marketing doesn’t have to mean you should look like a robot.

If you run a solicitor’s firm or law firm, then maybe perhaps wearing a tie if you’re a bloke, and a smart suit if you’re a woman would not go too amiss.

In the website design world, if I wore a tie to a business meeting, people might feel that’s a little incongruent with the creative industry which is website design.

So make it appropriate to your business, but come across as friendly and friendly-looking. It is not difficult to do, but a lot of people seem to really miss out on this.

But overall, the most important thing is to focus more on being human in your marketing.  People still like to do business with people.

In the business to business world, even in the online transaction world, we still like to feel like we’re doing business with a human being. I would urge you to put more of this into your marketing. And I promise you; if you’ve got next to none of this, and you put more of it into your marketing and more of it into your website, I promise you your results will improve.

So I hope that’s been useful. And remember, none of this is going to be any good unless you do something with it.

Here’s a spot of help if you’re interested in using video more in your marketing: https://www.buzzwebsitedesign.com/5-great-reasons-to-use-youtube-in-your-marketing/ 

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