How marketers can improve their empathy levels, and why it’s important to do so

Out of touch, detached and lacking in any special emotional skills – The Drum’s recent story on the lack of empathy of those working in advertising and marketing doesn’t paint the most flattering portrait of the industry.

The research mentioned in the story found that people working in advertising and marketing have no special aptitude for understanding others. It also revealed that the industry has different ethical and cultural preferences to large swathes of the population, indicating there is a profound disconnect with the people it seeks to influence.

Why does this matter? Our own research has repeatedly shown that making emotional connections is becoming more and more important – even when it comes to the traditionally staid world of business-to-business marketing.

So here are five things we’ve used to develop marketers’ empathy skills and which will help advertisers to get in touch with their customers.

Acknowledge the importance of an emotional connection

B2C marketing has long embraced the concept of building brand identity through emotionally evocative content but B2B has always tended towards a more rational and ‘business-like’ approach. And yet our recent research showed that B2B purchasers are almost 50% more likely to buy a product or service when they see personal value.

Understand the science behind emotions and decision-making

To understand the way in which emotions influence decision-making, we need to map what emotions there are and how they influence one another. One of the best frameworks for doing so is Robert Plutchik’s 1980 Wheel of Emotion. Plutchik defines eight primary, bipolar emotions: joy versus sadness; anger versus fear; trust versus disgust; and surprise versus anticipation. Find out more about the framework and the how to use it in B2B research in our paper The Emotions That Drive Business Decision Making.

Research audiences to build empathy

The key for B2B marketers developing empathy is to truly understand the needs of customers and the ways to meet them. And yes, we’re a market research firm and surely we’re going to say the best way to do this is through market research, but it’s actually true – one of the problems that the Drum’s empathy study revealed is that marketers think they have special insights. Although, the reality shows that is not the case at all. Research takes the guesswork out, it’s as simple as that.

Turn research into recognisable profiles

Extending on from the previous point, buyer persona research can provide invaluable insights into customers which can spark a ‘big idea’. That’s why we make sure researchers speak to actual buyers about actual buying decisions, so you’re not in the position of second-guessing.

Persona profiling turns a target audience into a recognisable human being and can act as a guide for determining what channels to communicate through, the type of content that will resonate most, and even the times the audience will be most receptive to the content.

Maximise human insights with the best in marketing technology

Focusing on empathy and emotion doesn’t mean ditching rationality or foregoing the benefits of automation. It’s about getting a balance and ensuring everyone in the marketing team, from creative and strategy people to media planners has the best possible information so they can make the best possible decisions.

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The Rise of the Self-Service B2B Buyer

 B2B buyers and marketers agree that the COVID-19 pandemic has changed the buying process: Buyers are investigating more on their own and taking more control, according to recent research from Considered Content.

The report was based on data from a survey conducted in December 2021 and January 2022 among 150 B2B buyers and 150 B2B in-house marketers.

Two-thirds of B2B buyers say they are now "self-serving" more information before contacting vendors.

Some 74% of B2B marketers say they are seeing customers taking more control over the buying process.

More than half (53%) of B2B buyers say they would ideally like to buy without interacting with a salesperson at all.

One-fourth of B2B buyers say they want to be able to get all the necessary information about a product/service online before contacting a salesperson. However, only 9% of B2B marketers say their firm offers all information online.

Some 52% of B2B buyers say they will never go back to their pre-pandemic way of buying, and 63% of B2B marketers agree that customer behavior has permanently changed.

About the research: The report was based on data from a survey conducted in December 2021 and January 2022 among 150 B2B buyers and 150 B2B in-house marketers.

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Digging through data: Four things that graph databases can teach marketers

We all know marketers are keener than ever to ‘put data at the heart of everything they do’ and better understand their customers. But what’s becoming equally apparent is how broad that phrase becomes when putting it into practice. Not all data is born equal - and the specific way you use it is key to how you’ll be able to create value from it.

This distinction comes back to the way technology has changed in recent years. As marketers, we have to accept that everything is connected. But traditionally this isn’t how we’ve stored and accessed data. Individual datum would sit alongside each other with absolutely no attention paid to the ways they fit together. It’s like building a Facebook where everyone just writes their details on a sheet of paper - it’s the network of connections between those records that really creates the insight and value.

Graph databases fix this by being built fundamentally around exploring connectivity within the data. While more traditional relational databases can only answer simplistic questions such as, “what is the mean age of people shopping on Oxford Street?”, graph databases can identify complex relationships and enable queries like: “how many customers are talking about my brand on social media and how many of them know each other?” It may seem like semantics but it’s a huge leap for informed marketers. This leap requires thinking about and asking the right questions to get the best insights possible.

Here are four key things that graph databases can teach marketers:

1. How to drive loyalty - offer products and services that customers want

Looking at data collected from past purchases and customer interests and hobbies, marketers are able to spot patterns and make appropriate recommendations or tailor relevant offers to customers for next time. It’s possible to even match the customer to others that are similar both in their social network and in buying patterns to gain better understanding. With a graph database you can go one step further to make real-time recommendations, as the technology allows you to instantly capture any new interests shown in the customers’ current visit. Amazon is a perfect example of this and companies including Walmart are using graph databases in this very way to make instant product recommendations.

Though retailers are leading the charge here, all sorts of brands stand to benefit from understanding what to offer customers next, based on their past purchases.

2. How to identify brand advocates

By looking at your customers, their connections and social media activity you could quickly identify those that are most likely to speak about your brand and recommend services to others. For example, you could ask the following: “Which customers of mine are mentioning my brand on social media and via which channels?”, “which have most social influence amongst their networks and like to write reviews?” and correlate this with, “which of these digitally active customers are buying most of our products?” The answers are likely to provide the most appropriate individuals that you can engage with and nurture into brand advocates. Whether it’s offering free products and trials or just targeting communications via the channels they use most to enhance loyalty, build rapport and encourage them to spread the word.

3. How to be the first to deliver

We all know long waiting times for products and issues with deliveries can be a huge frustration. Graph databases’ unique properties can help solve this recurrent pain point and achieve real brand differentiation in doing so.

London-based company Shutl is using graph databases to determine the quickest possible way to deliver an item from sellers to buyer in real-time. When planning routes on its previous, relational database it could take several minutes to crunch the data – now it takes a second, and gives up to fifty different scheduling choices. Now, acquired by eBay, the company can deliver within 90 minutes of placing an order. 

4. How to provide  quicker customer service

In an age where global selling is the norm, many businesses now offer a huge range of products and services that vary from region to region – such sprawling product catalogues can be difficult for employees and customers to navigate whether online or in-store. Using a graph database can allow organisations to quickly identify and offer customers a product that is closest to their needs and react quickly when problems arise.

Telenor, one of the world’s largest mobile operators, is one such organisation to benefit from this technology. With over three million mobile subscribers, keeping track of customers, their service plans and supporting the online self-service management portal was a serious challenge.

Using a graph database, Telenor is now able to navigate through vast amounts of data by asking it specific customer-related questions, which has improved performance and reduced query and response times from minutes to seconds (and in some cases, milliseconds). With customers increasingly after instant and seamless services, the quicker businesses are able to respond the better.

For too long, it has felt like getting to know your customers is almost made more difficult by the way companies manage master data – databases are vast and can be overly complex to navigate. Graph databases change this, building the importance of relationships into every piece of data and every query you make. It allows you to ask better questions as a marketer, generate better insights and, ultimately, serve your customers better using that knowledge.

What may sound like a techy area is actually one that can manifest in the most old-fashioned marketing advantage of them all: happier, more loyal customers.

Claudia Remlinger is marketing director, EMEA at Neo4J.