Humanising your marketing is the topic of this Be Better With Tracy Heatley podcast episode, and here is the transcript.
“Hi, I’m Tracy Heatley. Welcome to this episode of my Be Better With Tracy Heatley podcast. This episode is all about why and how to humanise your marketing strategy.
As a Chartered Marketer and strategy specialist, I could talk to you all day long about the formulas for marketing success. There are indeed certain steps to follow to eliminate risk and maximise opportunities, but it’s never an exact science.
With so many internal variables and external influences to consider. Then, combining this with assessing financial elements, quantifying decisions, and making sure that everyone within your business is performing and content. It’s not always easy running a small business, is it? I fully embrace that there is a right way of doing things. Equally, I appreciate that the bottom line is crucial for small business owners.
If you read business strategy books, there’s usually a mention of stakeholders. In a nutshell, stakeholders could be any person or group that impacts or is impacted by your business. So, that could be your employees, suppliers, or strategic partners, to name but a few. As stakeholders play a massive part in your business and marketing strategy, especially your customers, it stands to reason that we should be trying to humanise our marketing strategies.
In earlier episodes, I’ve talked to you about target audience profiling. I’ve also chatted about the marketing mix, including developing your price, product, place, and promotions. I stand by what I said about the importance of this, and that there is an ideal approach to developing these.
You can follow the same formulas to develop a business and marketing strategy. However, the results will be completely different for every business. It’s also plausible to suggest that the same business would get different outcomes at different times. Say from one year to the next, for example. I guess it’s a bit like doing algebra. Using the same formula with different numbers equals different answers. I’m far from the world’s greatest mathematician, and I can’t quite believe that I’ve just used a math’s analogy. Oh, well, wonders will never cease!
I’d really love for us all to take things one step further by taking pushing forward to humanise our marketing strategies. Demographics are a way on pinpointing certain characteristics about our customers, which are crucial to marketing success. If your customers are consumers, this may be things like socio economic groupings, age, and salary brackets, for examples. If your customers are businesses, then you may categorise businesses by age, size, or type of business.
Psychographics contributes humanising marketing. Putting it as succinctly as I can, Psychographics is a long formal word that relates to customers aspirations and attitudes. Things like personality, values, social status, and interests, for examples.
It’s a good idea to mix these up to suit your business. Take my Be Better With Tracy Heatley business for example. Over 80% of my marketing mentoring and networking training clients are service providers, with a desire for personal, professional, or business growth, aged between 33-55 years old. Did I set out to target these? No! It just happened. However, it’s safe to assume that there will be other businesses that fall into these categories that will need my help. I know who to target my services too.
It’s easy when we focus on these to get bogged down with statistics and quantifying everything. They’re important, but let’s add a dash of humanising too. Our potential customers are more than numbers, they’re people. Whether you’re a B2C business to consumer or B2B Business to Business company, ultimately, it’s a person who decides to buy. So, sprinkle a bit of marketing magic and humanise your marketing strategy.
I’ve never read a textbook that focuses on a humanistic approach to marketing. Even though, it’s crucial to making your customer feel good, safe, confident, and trusting. Should you be doing so? Hell, yes! Absolutely. I’m in the process of writing a book, and believe you me, it will be in there.
You can do all the research and analysis in the world and follow the correct formulas to develop a suitable and robust business and marketing strategy, but if your messages are not received by your potential customers, in the right way, then accuracy and timing are irrelevant.
When I refer to humanising your marketing strategy, essentially, I mean focus entirely on your customer and giving them what they want and need. You won’t be the only business owner who has set targets and thought about the financial rewards, in terms of profits, that they will bring to your business. You’re running a business, so it stands to reason that you should be goal setting and aiming for profits. However, I believe that if you give what your customers truly wants and make them feel beyond satisfied, the profits will flow.
Humanise your marketing strategy, then filter it through to potential customers by humanising your marketing messages. If you get it right, you can make your future customers feel safe, trusting, excited, certain, reassured and a sense of knowing that they’re going to buy from you, at some point in the future.
All you have to do is establish exactly what they want and give it to them. I say that with ease, but I recognise that there are certain marketing methods you’ll need to adopt to do this. Doing this, though, could not only save you from wasting valuable resources like time and money, but it could be a game changer for your business. Find out where your customers are fishing, so to speak. Establish what they require and put measures in place to meet their requirements and exceed their expectations. Remember that you need to be speaking to your future customers, even if it’s from afar, for now. In addition, if you humanise your marketing, it could help you to retain customers too, so give it a go.
If you’re enjoying my podcasts and finding them useful, would you mind leaving me a Google, Apple, or Amazon Audible review. By way of thanking you, I’ll add you into the draw to potentially win a free one-hour online marketing mentoring session with me. It will be a no strings, no pressure session that is designed to add value to you and your business.
There are more free resources like book reviews, blogs, and podcast episodes available to you on my website www.tracyheatley.com
Should you need any help developing your business strategy, marketing, or business networking, I’m your woman. Do get in touch if I can be of assistance and I’ll be delighted to hear from you
My name is Tracy Heatley, and I thank you for listening to my Be Better With Tracy Heatley podcast.
Better Business, Better You!
