Empathy Applied to Your Communications and Marketing Strategy

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When asked what she wanted to be when she grew up, 5-year-old Renata replied, after some thought: "I would like to sell something that everyone wants to buy."

This astonishing response from a 5-year-old is a good idealization of the reason for marketing. In fact, for many years the mystery of the purchasing decision has filled pages and pages.

Today, with technology and its impact on ubiquity, the market and its segmentation no longer work as before. There is too much information and diversity, so the desire for everyone to want to buy what you are selling is an increasingly difficult ideal to achieve.

And that is where a very specific concept of Emotional Intelligence emerges: empathy.

According to Wikipedia, "Empathy is the cognitive ability to all mobile name list perceive, in a common context, what another individual may feel. It is also described as a feeling of affective participation of a person in the reality that affects another."

In other words, if we manage to connect with the other person, understanding what they feel, what they think, what hurts them, and we manage to see it with an objective prism, without passing judgment on it, then we will achieve a basis for empathetic communication. If we can then communicate things that make sense to them through a means validated by that audience, we complete the circle of communication.

A few days ago, in the context of the launch of the iPhone 6, it was also announced that the English group U2 would give away their latest album to iTunes users. Apparently the results were not as expected and an article on a marketing blog talks about the 3 lessons we should learn from this case. "Basically, that users no longer accept impositions, that users are no longer downloading music as before and are going more for streaming and finally that U2 no longer has the popularity it once had."

The underlying issue is to identify whether there was empathy with users and, from there, to determine the estimated demand.

We basically identified 3 steps to develop an empathetic communication model:

Identify strategic audiences. A group of people with a strong common theme. These are, according to Seth Godin, the tribes. And the act of identifying has to do with being able to understand and comprehend what is behind the aesthetics, habits and decisions of these audiences. Here, listening is essential.
Develop messages tailored to each audience. Know what to say, what to show and what to communicate, ensuring consistency and understanding that this point of empathy is key to achieving effective results and connecting with audiences.
Empathetic Media and Activities. This point is key. Audiences and messages define what type of media and activities will be most effective in achieving full and rich communication.
Finally, comes the most conclusive part: how to measure the results of marketing actions. And our conviction is that the metrics of all marketing activities must be aligned with the business result. If it does not contribute to that result, we lose focus and waste marketing money.