Read time: 8 minutes
Personalisation was the marketing buzzword of the 2010s, but we all know the B2B marketing landscape never stays still for too long.
That’s why the focus has shifted from mere personalisation to a more profound approach: humanisation.
Simply adding someone’s name to an email or tailoring a message to their preferences is no longer enough. The majority of B2B buyers (83%) say that brands must treat them like humans rather than just a sale if they hope to win their business.
As a result, humanisation will be a driving force in B2B marketing over the coming decade.
But how does this differ from personalisation and how can you successfully implement humanised marketing strategies into your campaigns?
Personalisation vs humanisation in B2B marketing
While personalisation focuses on customising your messages based on specific data points, humanisation is all about infusing your marketing strategies with authentic human elements.
Although personalisation makes marketing communications more relevant to the individual, this often remains surface-level. Humanisation, on the other hand, goes beyond customisation and dives deeper, emphasising the need to build genuine connections and understand the humans behind business decisions.
In order to do this, marketing teams must understand the emotions, motivations and challenges of their target clients and address them in a relatable manner. This approach moves beyond transactional interactions, aiming to build trust and long-term relationships.
For example, rather than simply sending a personalised email with their name and some information on their recently viewed content, a humanised approach would involve sharing insightful, relevant stories that truly resonate with their experiences.
The benefits of humanised marketing strategies
The ability to build genuine connections with key decision-makers in the B2B world is crucial. This approach not only leads to increased trust and loyalty among B2B customers but also encourages clients to engage in long-term partnerships with your brand.
Enhanced customer experience
By focusing on the humans behind the communications, marketers can create more meaningful and satisfying interactions, leading to a far superior customer experience.
A better customer experience generates loyal customers, and almost three-quarters of consumers (73%) claim that the customer experience is the biggest deciding factor in their purchasing decisions, ahead of product quality and price.
Differentiation in a crowded market
The B2B landscape is competitive, and humanised marketing helps brands stand out. It gives you the opportunity to showcase your company’s unique personality and values, making you more memorable to clients. Which, again, can help build trust and loyalty and drive repeat business.
Improved engagement
Content consumption has increased with over half of B2B buyers (55%) relying more on content to research purchasing decisions than they did one year ago.
Of which, they're more likely to engage with content that resonates with them on a human level, as well as content that contains relevant and timely messages. This can lead to higher engagement rates and more effective marketing campaigns.
Essential steps for successful humanised marketing
If you want to engage with your future clients on a more human level, you need to implement a more humanised B2B brand strategy. Here are some important steps that will guide you in creating meaningful connections that extend well past the sale.
1. Understand your audience
When B2B buyers begin the customer journey, they represent not only themselves but also a whole suite of decision-makers.
What’s more, over a quarter of B2B buyers (27%) say their journey will involve even more people in the future, which means it’s more important than ever to get to know all of the decision-makers within an organisation.
This enables your marketing efforts to appeal to the needs of the entire decision-making suite in order to move them down the sales funnel as a group.
This approach allows your marketing strategies to resonate with all members of the decision-making team, helping them progress through the sales funnel together.
To build on this understanding, it’s crucial to examine the demographics, psychographics, and behavioural patterns of clients and prospects.
This goes beyond understanding their business needs to also their personal motivations, challenges, and aspirations. Engage in conversations, conduct surveys, and gather feedback to gain insights into their world.
Acting on this feedback also shows that you value their opinions and are committed to continuous improvement and enhanced customer experiences.
2. Develop a brand personality
It’s important to define your brand's voice and personality to make it as relatable as possible. You can do this in a number of ways to reflect your brand and values. Your voice could be formal, casual, humorous, or empathetic, depending on what resonates best with your target audience.
A powerful brand narrative will instantly humanise your company, making it easier for clients to connect with and remember your brand and marketing messages. Develop a narrative that highlights your mission and values, ensuring it aligns with the needs and challenges of your customers.
Include concrete examples—like challenges your company faced and overcame or goals you reached—to bring your narrative to life. Consistency is important, particularly in the face of change.
Whether it’s your website, social media, or email campaigns, your storytelling should reflect the same tone and message across all platforms. For example, Patagonia integrates its respect for the environment into every fiber of its messaging, an approach that inspires long-term trust and loyalty from its customers.
3. Share authentic stories
A key part of humanisation is using storytelling to convey your brand's values and the people behind the scenes.
Sharing case studies and customer success stories, as well as showcasing your team members, can build trust and relatability. Being open about your processes and any challenges your company faces can also help.
This transparency builds trust and shows clients that your company operates with integrity.
4. Embrace transparency and honesty
Put simply, transparency builds trust, which is essential in the sometimes cold world of B2B. Share your values and business practices with transparency, from how you approach sustainability to how you deal with failure.
Acknowledge challenges publicly, but frame them with solutions. If your supply chain was affected and there were delays, provide insight into how you’re working to repair it.
5. Customise customer experiences
Personalisation is more important than ever in this digital-first world where buyers are engaging with content at every step of their decision-making journey. Leverage data analytics to gain insights into customers’ behaviors, preferences, and needs, and use these insights to deliver personalised experiences.
For instance, CRM engines can track customer interactions and allow you to build tailored campaigns around specific pain points. So, a B2B software company could segment its audience by industry and send tailored guides that address industry-specific challenges.
When you focus on actual humans, not general demographic groups, you change the discussion from what you sell to who you help.
6. Personalise with empathy
While personalisation involves using data to tailor messages, ensure that these messages are crafted with empathy.
It's not just about addressing the client by name but also acknowledging their unique challenges and offering solutions that genuinely help them.
After all, it’s no good sending an email saying “Hi John” if the rest of the email is irrelevant. Strategic marketing requires you to build a connection through relevant personalisation and remembering that there’s always a human at the other end of your communications.
7. Engage on multiple channels and provide consistent experiences
Reach out to your audience through the platforms where they're most active. This includes social media, blogs, webinars, emails and industry events. Diversifying your channels like this allows for multiple touch points, increasing the chances of meaningful interactions.
As part of this, you also need to provide consistent experiences and ensure that your brand's voice and messaging are consistent across all platforms. A consistent customer experience helps build a strong brand identity and trust.
Social media is a great way to open up a dialogue and humanise your response. Share plenty of behind-the-scenes content, whether it’s your team getting ready for a product launch, or celebrating a company milestone, to give a human perspective on your brand.
8. Show employee personalities
Highlighting these individuals not only humanises your brand but also helps illustrate the impressive talent that powers it. Tell employee stories, from their career journeys to their passions outside of work, and use their voices in blogs or videos.
Content created by employees, such as a developer discussing how they solved a difficult problem, is authentic and relatable. Once your team starts sharing their LinkedIn posts and building that first ripple effect of trust and connection, the magic happens.
9. Focus on building trust
Trust leads to the best kind of business relationships — the long-term ones. When businesses trust each other, they are more likely to work together over time, making it easier to grow and succeed. One key way to build trust is through consistent messaging. This means always communicating the same values and promises. For example, if your company says it values customer service, you need to show that in every interaction with clients.
Reliable service is also crucial. If customers know they can count on you to deliver what you promised, they'll feel more confident in your business. This could mean meeting deadlines, providing high-quality products, or being available to answer questions.
Building relationships, one human at a time
While personalisation is a valuable tool in B2B marketing, humanisation takes it a step further by fostering genuine, human connections.
By understanding and addressing your clients' deeper needs and emotions, you can build trust, enhance customer experiences, and differentiate your brand in a competitive market.
With all that in mind, it’s important to remember that at the end of every business interaction, there's always a human being seeking value, relevance, and connection from your marketing content.
