Despite the obvious fact that your customers are people, there’s still so many businesses out there treating their customers like robots, using generic messages and corporate language in order to win over audiences. Unfortunately consumer trust is a huge factor in running a successful business and if you’re customers can’t see you as anything more than a faceless profiteer, you could be in trouble.
The fact is your customers want a business they can trust, one they can relate to and engage with, which is why showing off you human side can be an effective way to remind consumers that real people are working behind the scenes, not corporate robots looking to grab your cash.
Humans can engage with and connect to each other in a way that your business cannot, if you’re looking for new ways to reach your audiences and humanise your business, why not keep on reading?
Have A Sense Of Humour
Humour is one of the easiest and most effective ways to connect with your audience, especially on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. Not everything has to be business and while you’re likely looking to get a point or message across in some form, you should still consider humour to do so. If you’re working to show the more human side of your brand, a joke, funny picture or even a relevant gif you can lighten the mood of your business and ultimately increase engagement with your customers.
One brand who uses humour well is Innocent Drinks, who infuse humour into much of their customer communications, including their website copy, email marketing and social media, keeping their jokes family friendly, inoffensive, yet still funny and in a tone that fits the brand.
A Look Behind The Scenes
People love to have an exclusive look behind closed doors, by showing off a behind the scenes view of your company through your blog or social media accounts, you can showcase your employees working hard, events that may be happening within your office or warehouse and even just your team having fun. Showing off the team who work behind your business gives your customers more of a connection to your brand, in the same way they would feel to actual people.
While it can be difficult for brands to discover fun ways to show off the behind the scenes of their business, by getting involved in real time events such as sales, charity days or even just special days within the office or store, you can easily offer your audience a great insight into your team.
Have Conversations
While it’s important to have conversations with your audience about your business or your industry, it’s still always a good idea to venture outside of your usual topics and communicate with your audience about different topics. Perhaps things that interest you personally, showing that you as a person have interests and hobbies, rather than just creating a dull, one sided voice that only cares about business. Small gestures and small conversations can go a long way and shouldn’t be ignored.
By building rapport with your customers consistently, you can help build a great customer relationship, with your customers viewing you in a friendly, trustworthy way, rather than as just another customers to sell to.
Use Everyday Language
It might be tempting to use every single piece of technical jargon and industry language when speaking with your customers, however it’s often viewed as a way of talking over other people’s heads, making your business seems inaccessible and potentially scaring your customers and potential customers away. Why not speak to your customers like you would a friend or someone you know in real life? Speaking like a human is, shock horror, a very important way you can develop a more human side of your brand.
By creating and building your messages around the idea that you’re speaking to a family member or a friend you can not only engage with others more effectively, but also develop your brands tone of voice, something which can carried over to all of your branding, from your social media to your website to your emails.
In the days of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, showing your business off as a trustworthy and human business has never been more important. Consumers don’t want to give their money to robots, they want to know they’re buying from and speaking to real people. By setting yourself goals and measuring how your customers are speaking with your customers, you can slowly work out how exactly your business can develop it’s human side and increase it’s sales, values and customer base.
