People are at the core of all businesses. From customers to partners, social media fans to employees — they all are humans, hence, the basic need for your brand to have a human value.
The nature and methodology of advertising has changed drastically with the beginning of a new digital era that empowers customers. Brands used to be more tactical, pushing their target audiences to purchase a product or service, whereas now, it is customers who inspire brands to adapt. Brands now need to be more considerate and human than ever before to capture their customer’s attention and build stronger connections that propel them to the top of people’s minds. As a brand, you need to think ahead and anticipate the new generations of buyers, ensuring that your brand equity is high when they surface. This is done by nurturing stronger brand connections, in which the human factor is key.
Showing people the human side of your brand is not just important, it is an inseparable part of an effective marketing and communications strategy. Consider this: A humanised brand means you will be able to inspire more trust from consumers and elevate the conversion rates of your leads. It also means that you share an emotive connection with your audience. Humanising your brand requires changes in your marketing strategy at the foundational level. There are a few simple steps that companies can take to add the human element to their communication and marketing approach:
Celebrate your people: Your customers know enough about your corporate goals, your mission statements shine bright on your websites, and your brochures are full of material details — but what of the people behind the data and sales percentages? Only if you centre your marketing and communication campaigns around celebrating your people will you be able to connect with your consumers. Let them see the people behind your business, put your team members in the spotlight, and make it possible for your target audience to look at you beyond just you brand name, logo, or market recognition.
Customise your content: If the content carries the most important message, change its tone to cater to more human values. Try to rope in your customers and share more user-generated content. This way, you will be able to gain the confidence of users who create the content and get features through your website or other media. It will not only foster your existing relationships with consumers and the market but will also play a role of testimonial to potential and new customers.
Share your stories: Think like a human and not a brand. Continuous reinforcement of how great your company is does not help. Humanise by sharing real-time stories that include incidents of your failures, the challenges, and the subsequent lessons learnt. This way, customers can relate better to your brand.
As such, building trust and creating human values around a brand is not a one-time or one-day exercise. It should be ingrained in your communication decisions and outlook, and your brand needs to be consistent in this messaging.
There are other factors, apart from these steps, that a brand will have to take into consideration to humanise. Interaction tops this list, and you, as a company, need to be accessible and available to your customers so that healthy interactions are enabled. Your credibility depends on how you respond to your customers when they are trying to reach out to you.
If your product and service is reliable, you’re already half-way into humanising your brand. If you can communicate that people mean a lot more than just business to you and that you care about the quality of the product, they can relate to you better, connect with your business on a deeper level, and would want to recommend and suggest your services to others.
Long-term trust is what the effective humanising of a brand results in, and, after all, that is what all businesses strive for.
