When you talk about B2B marketing, you often imagine it as people in suits discussing purely business matters. But there is a better strategy for doing it. Here is a useful guide on how your startup company can add a human touch to your business-to-business marketing.
Why Humanize B2B Marketing?
Considering that B2B marketing happens between companies, you might wonder whether adding a human element will be a worthwhile move. There are several reasons that will surely change your mind about the whole idea.
Create A Better Brand Narrative
While B2B transactions happen between companies, the decision-makers who approve those are ultimately people. By appealing to the human aspect of their customer behavior, you stand a better chance of influencing their decisions.
Cultivate Long-Term Relationships
Going further, B2B relationships are also anchored to interpersonal relationships between you and the client decision-makers. When you form a more emotional connection with these decision-makers, they are more likely to trust your startup business. That trust will serve as the foundation for a continued relationship with them.
Increase Your Marketing Success
It’s not only the brand that you are directly interacting with who are impacted by a more humanized marketing strategy. Other brands who see your efforts are more likely to be interested in you. This gives you more opportunities to attract new clients into your fold.
How To Humanize Your Startup Business Marketing The Right Way
Since it would be a significant shift in your startup company B2B marketing effort, adding a more human aspect requires careful thought/ After all, you want to make that shift feel natural for your clients. This will make them more receptive to your marketing efforts.
Developing Your Brand Identity
Of course, you already have a brand identity in mind at this point. But you might want to stop first and take a second look at it. Think about what you are emphasizing and how those relate to the human aspect of your target clients.
For instance, your brand narrative will often emphasize what services or products you offer and how you deliver those. By themselves, these already give a rational presentation of your business that will tick all the usual business points. Team management software Slack does this well in its marketing campaigns.
But there is more to clients’ decision-making process than just these. Acquisitions managers may also lean on their values when deciding whether to work with a company. For example, they might want to make sure that the company follows sustainable business practices.
By leaning your brand narrative towards those values, you inspire clients that you will be able to deliver their desired outcome. Here, you will notice how this style of B2B branding is similar to B2C strategies.
Fleshing Out Your Startup Company Purpose
An essential part of developing your human-oriented B2B branding is emphasizing the purpose of your company. For this, you need to answer five key questions.
- What inspired your business?
- What’s interesting about your brand story?
- Where do you add the greatest value?
- Why are you in this industry?
- How has your business evolved?
By answering these questions, you get a clearer picture of your startup company values. You can then use these values to further refine your brand message into something important people in client companies can get invested in.
Delivering Your Startup Company B2B Message
Once you have crafted your new B2B branding message, plan how to deliver it to clients. This is where you go back to strategies targeting human customers. Here, you would want to have the decision-makers quickly get your message.
Developing Customer-Oriented Content
When building your B2B content, keep the focus on the human users. One effective strategy here is highlighting the benefits that you offer. You would want to answer the question “What’s in it for me?” that decision-makers ask. As mentioned earlier, your answer corresponds to both their company’s needs and their personal requirements.
To make that connection, explain how your services can help them accomplish their specific tasks. An effective strategy is to emphasize what they can do with your services, not what you can do for them. This encourages them to make a more proactive stance in choosing you as an option, something that Salesforce highlights in this ad.
Showcasing Your Team
When humanizing your startup company B2B efforts, your client should also view you as such. Presenting the people behind the business helps clients connect better with the values that you promote. Feature one of your team’s outstanding members and talk about how they can help the client.
Another way that you can present the people in your team to B2B clients is by letting them do the talking. Encourage them to talk about their work on their social media profiles. You would also want them to use their names in correspondence with clients. When decision-makers see that they are talking to actual people, they are more likely to engage.
Making Your Startup Company Transparent
As much as you would want to impress clients with what you can do, it would also help your marketing efforts if you are transparent about what you can’t do. Nowadays, clients are wary about companies that do not provide a complete picture of their offerings. They are worried that they might sign up for one that doesn’t deliver.
For this, you would want to mention your business limitations. This might seem like a step back. But once clients weigh it against your startup company’s capabilities, they can better see the benefits of what you offer. From there, they can be more willing to work with you to overcome these limitations.
Getting Additional Help
Humanizing your startup company B2B efforts does require some additional effort. For one, you need to have enough people to respond to inquiries made by companies. Outsourcing can be a great strategy for that effort.
The idea here is to get an outsourcing partner that has extensive knowledge about this style of B2B marketing. They will be able to provide agents that can engage clients in a more personal manner. Additionally, they will be able to provide you with tools that you can use to serve clients when you do land the contract.
Boost Your Startup Company B2B Marketing With A Human Touch
When done correctly, adding a human angle to your startup company B2B marketing can go a long way in drawing the attention of clients. But you need the right partner by your side. Contact us today and we will show how we can help.