Don’t you think, we have started using terms like “Business to Business” or “Business to Consumer,” when we really should be more focused on creating a “Human to Human,” perspective?

Of course, there is no secret that businesses are on the frontlines of the next marketing landscape revolution, but with a change in technology, B2B marketing has also changed. While technology and automation are essential tools for crafting and producing impactful, important, and booming communications, B2B marketing has assumed that there are no humans in business. But they are forgetting that putting humans at the centre of the marketing strategy, can create a real experience for humans which in the end all matters. 

Why do we need to be more human-centred?

Let’s just assume, I was talking with a VP of Marketing recently about helping their SDR team get better results with compassion. We looked at the SDR team’s data and saw her team sent a huge number of cold emails to targeted accounts with little response. When she saw the data she talked about how she was getting “tons of cold-emails.” She said about after being promoted to VP Marketing six months ago she felt like every technology and provider put her on their ABM hitlist. “I feel like someone painted a target on me when I got promoted,” she said. And went on to say, “I can tell they’re canned and delete them, they all seem to copy each other’s approach.” The irony wasn’t lost. She was realizing her SDR team was doing the same thing to their potential customers.

Now you realized why human-centric marketing is needed. We have more marketing to sales technology to connect with customers today, but they’re tuning us out. Why? Because marketers and sellers are using technology in a way that is creating barriers to real customer connection.

What is Human-centered Marketing?

The concept of human-centred modern marketing begins with understanding your customers and buyers. At the roots, it starts by understanding their goals and motivations. Despite the ever-increasing influence of digital technology in our everyday lives, both business and personal, the need for human understanding in the context of marketing is increasing.

Now, we have an idea of what is human-centric B2B marketing and why we should always use human-centred marketing. We have listed down four ways to adopt human-centred marketing for better results.

1- Focus on customer experience

You must have noticed how a hotel manager operates his hotel. Their main goal is to fulfill the needs of their guests. Why can’t we approach our marketing and sales the same way? If you want to apply empathy to your marketing, consider how this hotel manager works. Of course, they don’t give the same advice to every guest but they are always ready to answer some of the same questions. The marketers can do the same and later, can approach their customers by doing things intentionally as a hotel manager does. 

2- Scale but don’t lose relevance

Sometimes the customer expects us to be scalable, and why are we saying this because customers move from interested, to ambivalent, and ultimately apathetic quickly. For example, in an email newsletter, we put the relevant content for our customers, but not every single newsletter needs to be personalized to their interests. Having said that, when customers find the content irrelevant, they immediately, without thinking, unsubscribe the email newsletter. Similarly, our salespeople do things that don’t scale all the time and if we don’t change our marketing automation approach, we’re going to kill the value of marketing automation.

Also read: 8 most valuable tips for personalized email marketing

3- Build a relationship

All marketing, selling and lead generation is about one word: relationships. There’s a real human being on the other side of the phone line or computer screen. Like you, this person has high career ambitions and is looking for opportunities to grow.

Your B2B relationship is one of many bullet points on this person’s list of responsibilities. That one bullet point, however, is a powerful opportunity to help that person look great in his or her role. The better your business relationship performs, the more empowered your customer will be in his or her role.

4- Apply Empathy

Empathy is your marketing inspiration. Use your empathy to move out of your mind and into the mind of the client.

What’s the bottom line?

Move away from ‘self-centered’ thinking to ‘customer-centric’ thinking and speak specifically to their motivations. If you don’t do this, you’re treating potential customers (aka leads) as objects and not as people. At FunnL, we suggest that you seek to understand them first; to know their motivation and learn what interests them. Lastly, to know what might be helpful to them to get what they want.

Human-centred marketing is about developing people-first relationships. Remember this, when you are marketing to people, you’re trying to get them to do something. But when you’re marketing for people, you’re advocating for them. You’re doing something that could help and make a difference.

By following these suggestions, we hope you can make a huge improvement in how you connect with your customers. This is what we follow here at FunnL, an intelligent B2B Lead generation platform powered by movingDneedle. Our people have been successfully generating leads for start-ups, companies offering Software-As-A-Service, and mid-size companies with less than USD 500 million in revenue. The team has a cumulative experience of generating more than 10,000 sales-qualified meetings. 

Don’t wait, Contact us now!