We live in a world where most marketing and customer service has been left to technology. While this has helped businesses save on hiring sales and customer service staff, it has brought one a challenge: customers feel they are handled without empathy. Since machines have no emotions, customers feel they have been taken casually.
This is even though sympathy and empathy are critical in customer service and retention. In this article, we will look at the role of sympathy and empathy in marketing and customer service and how businesses can use these feelings to grow their brands.
What Is Sympathy And Empathy In Marketing And Customer Service?
While the terms empathy and sympathy are closely related, they are different. Sympathy is when you share the feelings of others, while empathy is when you understand other people’s feelings even though you do not share them.
Simply put, sympathy happens in the brain, while empathy occurs in the heart. Therefore, you need empathy for a better connection with a customer. Empathetic marketing involves connecting your customer’s feelings with your brand. Instead of just throwing ads at your customers, you create content that meets their needs and addresses their pain points.
Creating content driven by user experience can show empathy. By stepping into your customer’s shoes, you can easily understand their feelings and consider the best solution.
Why Empathetic Marketing Is Important
Here are several reasons to consider empathy marketing.
Build trust
According to a 2022 PWC study, only 30% of customers trust brands. By showing empathy in your marketing, you can quickly build trust between your brands and customers. Consumers trust brands that are more relatable.
Brand loyalty
When you show empathy, the result will be customer loyalty to your brand.
Increase sales
The days when customers would be pushed down the sales funnel are long gone. Today’s customers don’t want to be sold to. Instead, they want to build trust with your brand first. Therefore, when you show empathy, this will eventually lead to increased sales.
How to Do Empathetic Marketing
Here are tips on using empathetic marketing:
- Humanize your content. Don’t assume you are talking to a nonexistent person when creating content. Instead, you should realize that you are talking to real people. Align your keyword research to the different stages of the buyer’s journey and make your message suitable for each stage.
- Stay genuine. In empathetic marketing, understanding your customers is essential. One way in which you can easily break their trust is by being fake. Ensure that you remain genuine when you conduct a campaign or share content. Transparency will help you to stay genuine.
- Treat customers differently. Even when they come from the same demographics, your customers are different. Their problems will still be different even when they come from the same age group. This means that they may even respond differently to images and colors used. So, how do you cater to different persons in empathetic branding? That takes us to our next point.
- Do research. Remember that when showing empathy, you put yourself in another person’s shoes. You must understand how your customers think to create an empathetic marketing campaign that resonates with your audience. To get some empathetic buyer insights, you will need to perform,
- Pay attention. You need to understand what customers are saying about your brand. This could be on social media, online forums, feedback from the sales staff, and more. Consider what they are saying about your brand and marketing. Is there something that they would like you to change? Ask your customers questions to understand them better.
- Provide the customers with the right content. Now, it’s time to put the information you have collected into practice. You need to share content that your audience will be interested in. Ensure that your content is also the same way you promised them. After doing customer surveys, look for ways to adjust your marketing, messaging, and communication channels to meet customers’ needs.
Empathetic Marketing Examples: Brands That Use Emotion
Here are several empathetic brands that use sympathy and empathy in marketing.
Delta Airlines
The company has a reputation for supporting employees to turn frustrating situations into positive ones. One such instance was in 2017 when they cancelled several flights from Atlanta due to bad weather. The company threw a pizza party for its affected customers to quell the customer’s anger.
Lush
This beauty product is made of natural ingredients and uses the tagline “ fresh handmade cosmetics.” The brand made a video series of how it is made. This takes its audience to the scene of the manufacturing process of some of its most popular products. Each video has a lush employee explaining the process of making the product.
This marketing method works because people who buy Lush products are looking for truly natural products. Taking the customer into their factory provides a human face to the brand.
The Home Depo
This is one of the most popular stores for home builders and DIY enthusiasts. Therefore, they focus on creating content that caters to different demographics. The store’s content provides their customers with tips on using their products. This may be in planting wildflowers or more. These guides enable their customers to trust them.
Do’s And Don’ts Of Using Empathetic Marketing
One of the best ways of using empathetic marketing is through storytelling. This can be in the form of infographics, blog posts, videos, emails, and more. When using empathetic marketing, follow these dos and don’ts:
- Understand the needs and desires of your audience
- Inspire your audience
- Avoid outrightly showing your selling intentions
- Avoid being too preachy
- Have just one goal in every marketing campaign
Final Thoughts
Empathy requires understanding customers’ thoughts, needs, grievances and pain points, which can help you create campaigns that meet their needs. This will enable you to connect with them emotionally, helping to build customer loyalty and improve customer retention. By following the above steps, you can quickly build customer loyalty.
