Why Empathy Is the Key to Digital Marketing Success

If there’s one thing that we think businesses need to use more of, it’s empathy. We believe in the power of seeing your company through the eyes of your customers, meaning that you can pivot towards being truly human-centric in every area.

Whilst we think this concept is hugely important in all areas of business, we can’t understate just how valuable it is in the realm of digital marketing.

Number-driven digital marketing is familiar. Whether its conducting a competition analysis or pulling together the metrics of a campaign, it’s easy to implement lots of logical strategy, without necessarily bringing emotion into the equation.

However, the benefits of using empathy to shape your digital marketing narratives are endless: Not only does it allow you to get a stronger idea of who you’re talking to, but how to target everything to them, thereby increasing the success of every campaign.

How can you generate empathy for your customers?

At the centre of creating empathy is brilliant research. More specifically, it’s brilliant user research.

Whilst it is so important to conduct market research and use data from things like central-management systems and sales information in your marketing strategy, empathy comes from qualitative data which is most often uncovered through user research.

Market research is “The process of gathering, analyzing and interpreting information about a market, about a product or service to be offered for sale in that market, and about the past, present and potential customers for the product or service” (Entrepreneur Europe)

User research is “User research is conducted so as to understand users’ characteristics, aims, and behaviors towards achieving these aims. Its purpose is to produce designs that improve their working practices and lives.” (Interaction Design Foundation)

To put it simply, user research gives depth of information about customers through understanding their behaviour, whilst market research gives breadth of information about your market as a whole. Both are valuable and should be used alongside each other!

Market research is often used by marketers within things like competition analyses and when forming strategy, but user research can be overlooked. As you can see from the definition, it allows you to truly step into your customer’s shoes, meaning that you can understand them and their experiences of the world in much more depth. Essentially then, it allows you invaluable insights into what your customer is actually looking for in marketing materials.

By informing your marketing, messaging and social media campaigns with user research, all of your communications are heavily informed by the people they’re actually trying to communicate with.

And there’s no denying that that just makes sense!

How knowing your customers can make your marketing stronger

As we discussed in our free resource for this month’s newsletter, we believe that personas are a hugely valuable aspect of any marketing strategy. By mapping out and truly “knowing” your customers, you naturally begin to empathise with them.

This them feeds into everything that you create in terms of content, copy and communications.

Tell your customers about value propositions that suit their needs

Potentially the most important aspect of your branding and all of your communications, your value proposition defines the underlying message that all of your products and accompanying marketing should be giving.

As Steve Harvey notes, “your promotional methods are just a megaphone for something underneath — your brand proposition.”

Put simply, defining your value proposition means asking yourself the question, “what is it that my company is giving to my ideal customer/user?”

This is where user research comes in. Through actually talking to your customers in focus groups and through surveys and through, you can assess what their pain points are, as well as how they’re currently solving their problem. Armed with these insights, you can relatively easily identify exactly what your company brings to the table.

Having condensed this value proposition into one sentence, you can use it to inform all of your marketing strategy and your digital narrative. After all, you know exactly what you’re selling and, most importantly why you are selling it.

Your value proposition will become the consistent thread beneath everything you create, all thanks to having a bit of empathy.

Persuade and inform your customers through the right communication and marketing tools to get the message in the right places

Behavioural change theories are “attempts to explain why behaviours change. These theories cite environmental, personal, and behavioural characteristics as the major factors in behavioural determination.” (Source)

All products — especially those related to tech or emerging markets — are likely to require some level of behaviour change from their users whilst adopting them. This change can be brought about in numerous ways, one of which is through well-executed and ethical marketing strategy.

Understanding the pain points of your customers and then, in turn, using these to inform your marketing strategy means that it is considerably more likely to appeal to who it needs to. However, you may also want to inform your marketing strategy with behaviour change theory, as long as it is used in an ethical way.

We have a whole post on this topic, so we will keep this brief, but let’s look at the behaviour change wheel.

The wheel suggests that behaviour is influenced by capability, opportunity and motivation. One of the external factors on these behavioural influences, among many others, is communication and marketing.

By understanding the wider cultural and social norms of your users, what motivates them and their capabilities, you can refine marketing to ensure that it appeals to your customers and, as such, influences their behaviours.

It is worth noting that this should only be done in an ethical way, to change behaviour in positive and helpful ways. You are looking to influence your customer because you truly believe your product would make their lives better, but you are not looking to manipulate them. Empathy isn’t just about understanding your user, but about stepping into their shoes and acting in their best interests.

Related Article: Supercharge your strategy: Bringing User Research + Market Research together.

Reach your customers in the right way, at the right time through social media

We’ve spoken plenty in the past about conducting brand perception research as a brilliant way to learn how effectively you are communicating with your audience.

Brand perception research focuses on the image that you portray to your customers, including through brand collateral and marketing campaigns. Face-to-face interviews allow you to assess, in real-time, how your brand is perceived through your social media and your marketing campaigns. It means that you really can see your strategy through their eyes, understanding their emotional response.

By gaining these insights into how your customers like to be spoken to, you can factor their perceptions into everything you create going forward.

To find out more about conducting brand perception research, read our blog post on the topic.

The Takeaways

Knowing your users well really is the key to effectively communicating with. Whilst it sounds obvious, it’s something that is often forgotten in all areas of business, including marketing.

However, by conducting user research, you can build empathy with your customers, refine your value proposition, implement behaviour change theory into strategies and understand how your brand is perceived. Each of these elements feed into having a tailored and successful marketing narrative.

So, if you’re looking for a way to boost profits, look towards boosting empathy first!