In today’s competitive marketplace, it is crucial for all enterprises to prioritize forging meaningful connections with customers and prospects by personalizing interactions.
Humanizing your brand serves two main goals in your business: it is what initially engages potential customers, and it is also what retains them. You need to win relationships if you want to win sales, which means it’s good business sense to invest in doing the work to humanize your brand.
What Does Humanizing Your Brand Mean?
Humanizing your brand means turning your brand from a faceless entity into a warm and welcoming community. That means giving your brand a personality. When done well, it leads to a customer journey that is rewarding, positive, and memorable from the initial interaction to final delivery and beyond. It helps you establish a relationship that is as meaningful as the solution provided.
Why Is Humanizing Your Brand Important?
Modern consumers are seeking an all-encompassing encounter, alongside top-quality products and services. The basis of their purchase choices are the experiences they receive, with price and practicality being secondary considerations. This implies that if two similar products are offered at different prices, customers will select the one they have a better connection with, even if it’s pricier. Consequently, if you desire to elevate your brand to greater heights, the key is to imbue it with a human touch.
There’s a famous saying: “people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” That, in a nutshell, is why humanizing your brand matters. You want your customers to feel like they mean something to you; that they aren’t just another online order or in-store shopper. Make them feel like a person you care about, and you’ll find they return to you again and again.
Three Main Factors
Humanizing your brand comes down to three main factors:
- Engagement
- Delivery
- Retention
These three key touchpoints will make or break your relationship with potential and current customers and clients. You can engage them, but if you don’t deliver, you won’t retain them. Building a client-focused strategy begins with engagement and continues through delivery, culminating in the result of retention. Your ability to create an unforgettable experience will set you apart and make your organization stand out from the rest.
Engagement
Engagement is the discovery process for customers. It’s the first point of contact they have with your brand and encompasses their experience beginning with learning about your products and services through the process of purchasing them. Engagement depends on understanding and recognizing your personal brand and value proposition, which hinges on your ability to be clear and honest about who you are and what you are offering.
Know your core values and honor them. This is critical in building trust with your client. By maintaining open and transparent communication, actively listening to your client’s needs, and addressing any concerns along the way, you will ensure the overall success of the project.
Delivery
Delivery is the next step in the humanization process. You’ve engaged a customer. Now you must follow through with what you’ve promised them. That means your products and services must deliver on what they say they will deliver. However, it goes beyond that. Ensuring you deliver a high-quality product or service is vital for any company to survive, but the way the product or service is delivered is equally important.
Keep your client informed of any changes or adjustments to the project timeline. Effective communication and patience are crucial as you seek to fully comprehend the issues the customer faces and develop an innovative solution for them. Although the outcome may not match the exact vision of the client, it is your responsibility to exceed their expectations by delivering an exceptional end product.
Retention
Retention is contingent on your customer’s experience with how well your brand handles engagement and delivery. Maintaining a balance of humility and empathy will enable you to cultivate a strong partnership and unlock future opportunities for collaboration. Asking yourself key questions such as, ‘Was the client satisfied with the outcome?’ and ‘Was their experience positive and memorable?’ Seek periodic feedback from clients. This helps prevent any obstacles or potential disappointments while also providing insights into areas of potential improvement and growth.
Ways to Humanize Your Brand
Here are some ideas on ways to give your brand a more human face:
- Add a little humor here and there to lighten the mood and show personality.
- Ditch the typical sales pitch and instead provide additional value by offering resources, such as an industry case study or a How To blog.
- Replace business jargon with relatable and personable language that speaks to your brand’s identity and values.
- Build an online community via social channels and engage, engage, engage.
- Diversify your content, meaning you shouldn’t always post about your industry. Occasional posts that are just for fun show you have a personality and go a long way in making your brand feel accessible and ‘real.’
- Make use of your About pages and social media accounts and show your team! Remind customers that there are actual people working at your company, and that they have lives and personalities, just like everyone else.
- Be available. No one likes a company that goes radio silent, especially when there is a problem. Make sure you have people on-hand to help customers and address any issues immediately. On that note…
- Apologize and take responsibility when necessary. This should be obvious, but it’s shocking how many brands will blame everyone and everything else for any issues that arise.
Brands might not be human, but customers certainly are. Humanizing your brand fosters trust and provides customers with opportunities to connect and engage in ways that are meaningful to them. It makes them feel important. It makes them feel like they are a part of something.
At the end of the day, all business comes down to relationships. Even if you are a huge company, you must make your customers know that you care about them. Because you do. After all, without customers, you have no business, right? And a key method to attracting and keeping customers is ensuring those customers feel like they matter. The best way to do that is to give your brand a human touch.
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