Perhaps your favorite marketing campaign probably pulled at your heart strings. Or maybe it made you feel joy, excitement, or even anger. No matter what it made you feel, you know one thing is for sure: it made you feel something!
It’s also very likely that the emotional marketing campaigns that come to mind were targeting consumers, rather than businesses. But just because you see more B2C campaigns using emotional marketing, it does not mean B2B brands can’t benefit from emotions!
Inject emotions into your B2B content! Evidence shows that B2B businesses could largely benefit from a humanized approach when building and promoting their brands. Rather than making wholly logical appeals, consider the power emotion has over our decision-making. Customers are looking for brands to make them feel more control of their work priorities and feel more confident — particularly during uncertain times! In fact, B2B purchasers are “almost 50% more likely to buy a product or service when they see personal value (i.e. opportunity for career advancement or confidence and pride in their choice)”.
According to Ardath Albee of Marketing Interactions, B2B customers want businesses to help them address bigger concerns like how to keep their businesses competitive and questions like “what should we plan for” and “what does the future look like”.
The key to communicating these concerns in B2B content? Empathy.
With brand empathy, you serve up useful information to B2B customers after their needs have been identified. Empathic content helps create a real shared connection and journey between an audience and a brand. Don’t just be sympathetic to their obstacles or challenges — rather, use your content to understand what B2B customers are really facing. Be honest and truthful in your content when talking about real problems, and work to have customers see you as a partner with empathy who really understands their goals and how to achieve them.
To play to audience emotion has traditionally been a more B2C marketing technique, but the reality is B2B audiences still want to see their personal human experiences and priorities reflected in B2B content. These B2B audiences just need to make sure their business needs are met before any purchasing decisions are made.