How can B2B marketing better connect in a fractured world?
What does it mean to practice marketing from a place of empathy?
I’m not being rhetorical. How can marketing find its way to a more human connection in an increasingly fractured world?
As COVID-19 shifts from pandemic to endemic, what will happen to digital communication? Which virtual experiences will we continue, and which will we shed?
This year we may see people pull back from virtual and bask in the physical and experiential. People are taking real vacations and unplugging again. Friends are getting together to hangout at restaurants, bars, concerts and the like. Kids are taking field trips. Live theatre is a thing again.
But, loads of people also became reliant on virtual conveniences. So we may see a bit of a boomerang effect.
Hedge your bets on digital innovations capturing convenience with a human touch. (And, no, I’m not talking about Meta.)
Things are starting to feel a bit like they did in the early 2000s, when we were on the cusp of a big change. We sensed digital would evolve as the internet, blogging and social media matured.
But.
We had no idea.
Even now, trying to run odds on specific changes feels particularly foolhardy. (No more prediction listicles please.)
What does it mean when change comes in response not only to tech innvoation, but also to a global pandemic?
No wonder the 1920s were roaring. People were emerging from a series of unfortunate events. But if history echoes, it’s doing so at a more rapid pace.
Maybe we’ll see a time when companies take their brands less seriously, in the best of ways.
B2B marketers will finally show personality driven by core values and brand promise.
We can all be a little less precious about designing the perfect campaign. So we can return to focusing on telling the human story of how we can help solve real problems.
We can break away from bad marketing habits. The habits that emerged chasing the mythical marketing attribution unicorn in the wild. (Hey, I was right there with you all. I used to love retargeting driven by actual relevance.)
It’s okay to be more privacy-minded. It’s okay to focus on a few key metrics instead of trying to track everything-everything.
It’s okay to let go of invasive tracking with no regrets.
It’s okay to not be able to get to attribution. Focus instead on listening to your audience and honest communication providing real value.
That, after all, is what you do when you work on getting to marketing that comes from a place of empathy.
