What Is Empathetic Content Marketing?

It’s one of the most important content marketing trends to know right now, and it starts with understanding other people’s feelings. While the idea sounds easy, not everyone gets empathetic content right. In fact, it’s not uncommon for brands to stumble when it comes to execution. Here are the steps to making empathy marketing work for you.

First, understand the definition of empathy

Sympathy and empathy are not the same thing. To truly understand your audience, it’s important to be empathetic, not sympathetic.

While sympathy is about acknowledging and even showing concern for someone else’s problems, empathy is about taking on someone else’s feelings and putting yourself in their position.

Empathy marketing can be described as “thinking in a customer-centric way and becoming a trusted source for your audience”.

Now put yourself in their shoes

After grasping what it means to be empathetic, it’s time to put yourself in your customers’ shoes. Rather than thinking about the products/services you want to push, consider the following instead:

• What are your customers’ main worries or pain points?
• What information/help/resources are they looking for?
• What are their needs, wants and desires?
• Who/what are your customers influenced by?
• What are their goals and how can they reach success?

One way to really dig in deep is to create a customer empathy map. While many businesses think they know their customers, it’s often not the reality. This is where an empathy map can be beneficial.

Provide an authentic solution

Once you have a better understanding of your audience and their pain points, you can begin to help them problem-solve. Remember, pitching your product/service as the solution to their problems isn’t necessarily the right way to go.

Quite often, customers are looking for advice, self-help guides, and useful information to assist in their research. Be genuine. This is about building your brand and positioning yourself as a trusted source, not about product marketing.

Forget about your bottom line

To nurture your bottom line, you have to stop letting it consume your every thought and move. Empathetic content marketing is about creating meaningful connections with your customers first – and growing profits second.

By building trust with your audience, positioning your brand as an expert in your industry and creating content that provides real value to others, you can increase sales and loyalty. Furthermore, empathy in content helps to turn customers into brand evangelists – the type of people who shout about you from the rooftops.

Find ways to empower the customer

Empowering the customer means putting the control in their hands. Rather than restricting them to biased information about why your company is the best, empowerment is about giving customers the honest data, tools and resources they need to make up their own minds.

The best way to empower is to create content without being self-serving. Take the opportunity to help your audience without expecting anything in return. If you can achieve this level of empathy in your content marketing, the conversions will follow.

Do you need help with your content strategy?

At Identify Digital, we have years of experience working as a digital marketing and content agency for local businesses in Yorkshire, and further afield. To chat to a content agency that understands the latest content marketing trends, call 01924 911333 or fill in our online enquiry form.