Empathy is always an important part of marketing - good marketing requires understanding customer challenges, preferences, and how we can help them. But in the world of B2B, it gets really easy to lose the focus on customers as people because so few of our metrics use human-centric language:
Cost per lead
Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs)
Return on Investment (ROI)
Lead-to-Close Conversion Rates
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Open Rates and Clickthrough Rates (ok - that at least suggest some human activity)
I often wonder if I missed my calling to be a psychologist instead of a marketer. How amazing would it be to really step back and focus on helping someone understand what they are really feeling and thinking and to help them use that insight to feel better? To truly actively listen the them, kindly challenge their perceptions, and become a trusted partner in helping them move forward. Oh well, maybe for another time.
Instead, I have channeled this framing into how I approach marketing. I have learned that you can actually help people at scale with at least smart part of their journey.
Be truly curious about your customers. Don't just think about Company X as your customer. Instead, imagine a market researcher who is overwhelmed with purchasing data and is really trying to help his team figure out what to do. How can you help him? What can you teach him about analyzing data? About storytelling, including data visualization? When you think about it that way, the type of content you might develop, the format you offer it in, and the tools you provide might be really different than if you were just creating a product brochure.
Teach others to be curious. One of the best things I did at IQVIA was to work with my market research team to develop personas of our customers. We learned so much about them, and used it to support our sales customers. We helped them understand which customers wanted to learn about our products by talking to our scientists and which ones wanted to self educate. We learned where to put content and in what format. Within a year, we had dozens of requests to create customer personas to help teams learn more about the humans to whom they were selling.
Enable your team find their best selves. Strong marketing leadership involves helping team members find their own strengths and broaden their skill sets. Be generous with your feedback. Invest time in learning what powers them - use tools like Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) to create language that fosters understanding and collaboration.
Create trust by giving and receiving constructive and honest feedback. It is crucial for personal and professional growth and teaches people how to grow. Business environments can really really unnatural - especially when remote work removes the subtle elements of culture building. In this world, feedback serves as a valuable signposting to help people know when they are on the right path.
In case it is not clear, I love marketing because I love helping people. Customers. Colleagues. Even myself. In deploying this approach, I have led teams that dramatically increased customer awareness and brand perceptions. Transformed employee engagement. Drove leads. In short, this approach enabled me to drive results and feel really great about it. Hard to ask for me in a job.
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