The Secret to Effective Marketing is Right Under Your Nose
“Do they understand my problems the best? Do I like them?”
Ideally, we want the people we’re trying to sell to to answer yes to both of those questions. It means we as copywriters or marketers have done things right.
A “yes” to both questions means we’ve somehow been able to build trust and affinity for our brand.
But how do we get there?
Ann Handley said it best: “Trust and affinity are grounded in pathological empathy for our audience.”
So, what do you know about your audience?
Do you know what keeps them up at night? What they’re afraid of? What their daily frustrations are?
If not, you MUST figure this out! And it’s not hard if you know where to look.
A personal story…
When I was put in charge of B2B marketing at a previous job, my best resource was our sales manager, Donny. Talk about a frickin’ treasure trove for a marketer.
We sold to banks and credit unions, an audience he knew deeply. He talked to marketing directors, SVPs, and IT managers at banks every week. He heard their questions at trade shows. He saw what resonated (and what didn’t) in presentations.
And he invited me into that world.
I began sitting in product demos, traveling with him to pitch to executive teams, attending trades shows, sometimes by myself. We’d talk about what worked best for each audience within a bank, and catered our messaging accordingly.
And we nearly doubled the revenue of the financial vertical in three years with this approach.
In short, I “heard it from the horse’s mouth.”
That’s where you can start, too. In his Laws of Copywriting course (which I HIGHLY recommend), Dave Gerhardt, CMO at Privy, talks about “Using their words, not yours.”
He’s speaking specifically to how it helps with your copy, which ties directly to building trust.
As Dave puts it: “How can you build trust as a brand if you sound like an outsider?”
You can’t.
Here’s how you can learn “their words” and develop understanding for your audience’s needs:
Email responses
Website chat conversations
Sales calls or customer conversation
Twitter
G2 or Amazon reviews
Quora answers
Customer service team members
Listen, ask deep questions, listen, understand pain points, and listen some more. And then include what you’ve learned in your messaging and test to see what resonates the most.
So that’s trust, but what about building affinity for your brand? How do you get people to not only trust that you can help, but like you, too?
Give. Give. Give.
Give value constantly. This can be a podcast, weekly LinkedIn videos, newsletter, whatever. But it has to be unique, entertaining, and regular. It cannot be the same stale takes they could find with a simple Google search.
Combine that with some personality, humor, and humanity, and you’re on your way. And it’s measurable, too (in the event your CMO or VP of marketing asks). Number of podcast downloads, email subscribers, video views.
It’s all people who are giving you the most valuable thing they have -- their time -- in order to consume your content.
They may even forget that they’re being marketed to. And that’s the point of “pathological empathy.” That’s what taking the time to figure out how to build trust and affinity does.
It makes your copy and marketing feel less like a sales job, and more like just getting to know someone.
And that’s the goal.
