The traditional approach to marketing is consumer-centric, but things have changed. Now, we are evolving to a paradigm that puts humanity at the center of everything and that addresses people not as consumers, but as complete human beings. It is the era of human-centric marketing.
In this new approach, our audience is no longer made up of mere passive recipients of content, but of interactive communicators who contribute their personal points of view. Success is no longer measured solely in terms of products sold, but rather by the strength of customer relationships. Join me to discover all the secrets of human-centric marketing.
What is human-centric marketing?
He human-centric marketing It is a new concept that arises when companies discover the importance of people and focus more on the human side.
A human-centric brand focuses on integrating human characteristics such as empathy, justice, reciprocity, kindness and compassion in your business strategies. Companies that want to adopt a human-centric approach must answer three questions:
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What can people who are part of the company achieve?
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How do our business decisions affect people?
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How can we create value for the people who work in the company?
In short, a truly human-centric strategy always starts with people and seeks to achieve a balance between human and business objectives.
How do we measure the success of a human-centric marketing strategy?
In more traditional business models, the focus is on results. You have to do whatever it takes to achieve results, and since these are measurable, there is little room for subjectivity. The problem is that this leads us to the end justifying the means, and people (both those who are part of the company and the customers) become means.
On the other hand, when we focus on people, we have to make room for subjectivity. People have different needs and expectations, so it is no longer so easy to be guided by objective criteria. Even so, the company’s management must be in charge of setting goals to see if it is moving in the right direction. These objectives will no longer only respond to business KPIs, but also to elements such as people’s development and well-being.
The key factor of human centricity: empathy
When we put humanity at the center of everything, empathy It becomes an essential ingredient. First of all, we have to be able to understand what our customers feel and communicate with them as equals. We can do this exercise starting from our buyer persona, focusing on their psychological characteristics and the feelings they experience every day to really understand what they need from us on an emotional level.
Then, the next step is to extend this exercise of empathy to all the people who interact with the company in one way or another, including employees, suppliers and even society at a global level. We have to understand that our company has an impact on all of them and that we must take measures to contribute to their development and well-being.
Human centricity and values
Values are what move people in their daily lives. Therefore, to really connect with them, companies must be able to show their “why” with more human communication, which shows the spirit of the brand and the people who work for it. Value-centered marketing and corporate social responsibility are key elements of a human-centric marketing culture.
Benefits of human-centric marketing
1) Improves economic results
It is quite a paradox: by dedicating resources to objectives that are not directly related to the business, business results improve.
It is known that working on happiness in the company is a profitable investment. When work is stimulating and the company offers a good environment, workers are more involved in what they do and their productivity increases. Employees stay with the company longer and absenteeism rates decrease. All these factors result in more benefits for the company.
2) Identify new areas of growth
In order to implement a human-centric marketing strategy, you have to get into the minds of your potential customers to know what they really need, if they perceive that your brand is satisfying this need and what they want you to do to provide them with a service. better. All this information will help you detect needs that are not being met and be able to cover them.
For example, Mike Diamond Services, an American plumbing company, found that customers didn’t like plumbers coming home dirty and smelling bad. This information helped him change his brand, putting emphasis on aspects related to hygiene and selling himself with the slogan “The Smell Good Plumber.” Thanks to this, they managed to become one of the leading companies in their sector.
3) Increase customer satisfaction
Brands that care about end customers generate higher customer satisfaction rates, which translates into more loyalty and in recommendations word of mouth
To begin with, any human-centric marketing strategy is based on market research of current customers. If done properly, the very act of asking for their opinion makes them feel valued, since customers value very positively that brands listen to what they need and implement improvements based on it.
Subsequently, we will use these insights to create products and services specially designed to respond to customer needs, which will logically also contribute to improving their satisfaction rates.
4) Improve your branding
Branding is not only about how you present your brand messages, but also how your products, services and features are perceived by the people you are targeting.
Human-centric marketing focuses on customer experience in all phases of the purchasing process. This improves brand perception and consequently, provides positive characteristics to your branding.
5) It is more aligned with company values
We have already mentioned that value-based marketing and human-centric marketing go hand in hand. In the end, companies that care about creating a positive impact on people and not just economic results contribute to creating a better society. This makes the people who work there happier and, ultimately, their customers will be too.
The life cycle of human-centric marketing
To propose a human-centric marketing strategy, we have to start from offering appropriate solutions to the appropriate problems. The methodology that we will apply for this is human-centered design, which is based on two phases: problem discovery and problem resolution. In turn, each of these two phases is divided into four stages. Let’s look at it in more detail.
Problem discovery
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Analysis. Analysis in human-centered design has three main purposes: to look for patterns in what has happened in the past, to know what is happening in the present and to predict what will happen in the future.
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Learning. We extract information from data to learn more about users. If we do not have sufficient data, we can complement this information with qualitative surveys.
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ID. In this phase, we put ourselves in the user’s shoes to understand their context and detect aspects related to non-verbal information.
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Historification. We try to develop a story about the user based on the information we have, understanding what their life is like over time and how we can help them along this path.
Problem resolution
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Ideation. After identifying the problem we want to solve and what is the cause of it, we look for a solution that we can communicate to the user. For this reason, we use the 6 W method popularized by journalism: who, what, how, when, where and why.
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Structure. We reflect on how we have to build and combine the different elements of the solution, whether it is a data set, a device or a website.
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Construction. The process of creating the solution, focused on methods to convey what we want the user to feel.
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Assessment. Finally, we must check if what we wanted to transmit has reached the user correctly and if this has solved their problem.
It must be taken into account that the human-centered design process does not always start from the same point. For example, if we do not yet have a large amount of data available, we will start with a definition of our buyer personas instead of starting with the analysis.