Marketers are ultimately interested in influencing consumer behavior, right? It doesn’t matter if you want someone to buy a product, enroll in a service, become loyal to a brand or align with a particular set of values. No matter what you’re trying to do, you’re not going to get very far unless you have a personal connection with the people you’re speaking to.
To illustrate the point, think about a stranger approaching you on the street asking you to buy a product they’re selling. You’d probably just ignore them and keep on walking. But now consider how you’d react if a close friend endorsed the same product and then tried to convert you. There’s a far greater likelihood that you’d buy in.
The difference between these two scenarios is that the stranger on the street means nothing to you – he’s entirely unfamiliar – whereas you have a relationship with your friend, their opinion carries weight and there’s a higher level of trust.
As a business, it’s admittedly difficult to form friendships with each and every one of your customers, but that doesn’t mean you can’t build a meaningful relationships rooted in trust.
How to Get Personal with Video
Our brains are hardwired to respond to faces from the moment we’re born. Before we learn to deal in text or speech communication, our first known “language” is rooted in facial cues. As one article explains, “Babies, even before their eye muscles are capable of focusing, still turn and face their mothers. We are hardwired (see below) to seek out a round object with two dark bands (one for the eyes, one for the mouth) even before we can see them clearly.”
Given our predilection for facial communication, it’s a wonder that more businesses don’t leverage the power of a human presence in their marketing videos. After all, what better way to drive meaningful connections than by using actual humans?
What’s more, humans develop a preference for people and faces that they have been repeatedly exposed to. This means that if brands reuse the same person in their marketing materials, customers will grow accustomed to receiving communication from that familiar personality. From onboarding to renewal and everything in between, having the same brand representative present at every stage of the customer’s journey with a business fortifies relationships.
When customers know who they can expect to hear from as they receive messages in their email, across their social feeds and on websites, they’re more susceptible to any messaging that person has for them.
Interested in learning more about making your business personal through marketing communication? Check out our blog, Driving Loyalty by Putting a Face on Chatbots.
