Is your Digital Marketing Campaign forgetting about Human Connection – don’t lose focus!
The future of digital marketing campaigns will depend on being able to connect on a human level with consumers. The immense value in human connection cannot be understated. In the same way we consume music, film, and media, the advertisements that resonate with us emotionally are those that we remember. The human connection in marketing is what gets people clicking. Consumers trust human connection more than they trust advertising so over the years, brands have shifted from ‘straight selling’ to building a human connection with its consumer.
Word-of-mouth recommendations and similar human connection-friendly marketing strategies continue to win the day for so many sites. Even as marketing tools advance and the ways to connect with one’s audience has changed, human connection continues to be the most effective way to build conversation. Every day, we are bombarded with hundreds of marketing messages. The last thing a consumer wants is to be sold to. So instead, successful brands have learnt to tell stories and build connection from the humanity of a brand. Traditional advertising is not trustworthy enough, according to numerous studies analyzing consumer behaviour. Thereby, to gain sales in marketing, sites must get creative. That is not necessarily a problem either.
Building trust with consumers is not as difficult as some may make it appear. For inexperienced sites, studying how others are doing it – including competitors in the same category and non-competitors – can provide some insight. What one might notice across the range of different strategies out there is that they all serve to build human connection and consumer conversations. As a website, we recommend putting your investment in that and in building word-of-mouth marketing. Few techniques are equally effective.
There are some who might read an article like this and take it to mean building advertising messages that are human and emotional. Though yes, that is a part of it, it is not the whole of it. There should be equal attention, if not more, paid to building offline human networks where positive recommendations are made. Communicate to consumers marketing messages that encourages conversation. For example, examine social networking sites. There, users do not post messages about nothing. No, they post messages about conversation. Think about the information, products or services, and marketing message that would be valuable enough to your target audience to get them talking about it with their friends. In a nutshell, that’s how to build a brand. Marketers sometimes forget the importance of human connection, instead focusing wholeheartedly on the analytics and numbers. Authentic, human connection means a heck of a lot to consumers, no matter what category one’s website is in.
A great way to build effective digital marketing campaigns is to view it through the eyes of a consumer. Any human being will want to connect on a real level with an advertising message and the messages that are able to do that are what is talked about with friends. That word-of-mouth advertising is so valuable, as it presents a marketing message for your brand from a voice who is knowledgeable and trusted.
For sites that may not have considered a humanized digital marketing campaign, taking a review of existing materials may procure some surprising results. Building effective marketing begins, first, by creating a human connection between message and consumer.
