Are you struggling to create marketing content that people will actually engage with? If so, you’re not alone. This is, of course, a common feature in an online landscape flooded with emails, branded content, advertisements and more, all aiming to market an endless stream of companies and sell an even more mind-blowingly infinite amount of products. In this environment, it’s hard enough to fight for elbow room, let alone to come up for air every once in a while. To do so is a crucial element to B2B marketing successfully, as it allows one to survey not only the competition, but one’s own methods as well.
Once we find time to do this, however, it may be difficult to see where things could be improved. After all, you might ask why a method you’ve learned or copied from another brand won’t work for yours while, at the same time, it acts as a cornerstone for that brand’s marketing platform. The truth is, unfortunately, that what works for one brand might not work at all for the next. But what does this mean?
Here’s where we get to the good news, and it happens to be something all good marketers know. In the competitive world of modern marketing, what sets a brand apart is finding a distinct, engaging and personable voice, at once refreshing and unique, and never afraid to blur the line of professionalism.
Simple, you might say. Isn’t this what marketing is all about? To tell a unique story about a brand that will convince people to engage, and ultimately pay for its products or services? Of course it is! But it’s definitely not simple.
Writing for Entrepreneur, Luis Congdon, CEO of Thriving Launch, argues that the key to successful marketing can be obtained through vulnerability and transparency on the part of the marketer.
According to Congdon, marketing is all about making a personal connection with your prospective client, consumer or end-user, and then turning this connection into brand loyalty and sales. Don’t believe him? Then how would you feel if we told you that 90 percent of people trust product or service recommendations from people they know, while a mere 33 percent trust messages that come from a brand?
But this statistic points to an obvious problem for marketers, who are ultimately looking to promote their brands, and that is the issue of humanizing a business.
In order to make this a reality, marketers need to take a page from the transparency marketing playbook, eschewing old school, stale professionalism in favor of personality, vulnerability and honesty. For Congdon, this meant telling pieces of his life story, revealing to clients and prospects some of the most intimate, and ultimately relatable aspects of his life. While its unlikely that you were homeless as a child in Medellin, Colombia, before being adopted—as Congdon was—it is likely that you have your own story to tell, however small or insignificant it may seem.
The truth is, no amount of brilliant logo designs, promotional products or well-phrased emails can ever make up for the power of personal, honest storytelling. Being vulnerable in meetings and in online or print marketing content can be as simple as talking about what brought you into the industry or where you went to college. We won’t fill in the blanks here. There are endless paths a life can take, and for marketers looking to personalize their message, they need look no further than their own.
