Social media marketing should not be a new term for anyone running a business. It is a buzzword that has been around for a while and it is not waning at all. Social media has given every business the leverage they need to connect to their customers and convert prospects in real time.
With the increased use of social media, a part most marketers leave out is empathy. It is not enough to create content and push them via social media and expect that everyone will consume it. You need to do more, your content has to be such that people can resonate with it and key into it.
Empathy marketing is important not only in social media marketing but in overall marketing. Your customers need to know that you feel what they feel. Therefore, this should reflect in the kind of content you create and curate. The next question is, how are you supposed to feel exactly like two hundred of your customers or even more? Or do you have to get into all the tight spots they have gotten themselves into so that you can feel for them?
The answer to both questions is no. You don’t have to feel like two hundred people or even twenty people. You equally don’t have to make deliberately bad choices so that you can feel the way others feel. The way to utilize empathy in your social marketing is encapsulated in these few tips:
Develop customers persona
The need for customers persona has been emphasized on here for quite a while. Dig deep and get as much data on your customers as possible and you can use this data to create what your ideal customer would look like, feel like and think like. If you are targeting a broad spectrum of customers, multiple personas can do the job for you. In this case, your customer persona is the template to guide you. The more data you have on your customers, the better.
Create empathy maps
With the user persona handy, you can create an empath map for each persona. Empath maps are used by a broad spectrum of business around the globe, you can use it to achieve the same results too. A traditional empath map seeks to answer questions like what your customer would say when asked particular questions, what they would think and how they would think. It is essentially projecting yourself unto your customers experience. You can choose to make your empath map as simple or as complex as you want it to be. Once your customer persona is solid enough, you can create an empath map that will allow you get into your customer’s head.
Use what you have learnt
It is not enough to catch a glimpse of what your customers are going through or being in their head, you must constantly put it to use. Build your brand using what you have been able to garner from the experience on the empathy maps. Curate your content with this in mind, write your articles with the experiences in focus, you will see how much good it will do your business. Aside from verbal forms, ensure you also use the experiences in non-verbal ways. Use it to fill in the gap and create that needed connection.
Repeat
We are talking about human feelings here, not some machine. You have to understand that our experiences change over time. You must therefore update your customer persona and empathy maps over time to ensure that it fits into the needed use. Revisit your customer persona and update it periodically, it will do your business a lot of good. As a note when curating an emphatic content, you don’t have to excessively market your product. In fact, it works best if you can find a way not to advertise your business at all. Allow your customers make their own choice, however, since you have connected with their pain point, they are most likely to choose your brand over the competitors.
You should be marketing emphatically especially on social media if you want to get your customers to connect with you.
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