Although all lead generation strategies should put the customer at the forefront of every campaign, human-centered approaches go one step further. This type of strategy is designed to put empathy and deeper understanding into campaigns in order to communicate with customers at their level. It helps to understand human behaviour and goals, in order to walk in the customer’s shoes. Essentially, it is about communicating with your audience in a way that is not only about pushing them through your sales funnel but also connecting to their needs and wants, making an impact before making a conversion.
Why is it important to take a human-centered approach and how do you go about using this approach within your lead generation strategies?
Embrace a Human-Centred Lead Generation Strategy
Think about your current lead generation campaigns? Are they speaking to your audience in a way that helps people relate? Are they so automated that they come across as sales messages almost right away? Are you listening to your customers and using their feedback? Do your campaigns have a real impact or are they purely focused on pushing leads through your sales funnel? A human-centered approach helps you deepen your connection to your audience in a way that adds value to both you and potential leads.
You can integrate this approach within your existing strategies by focusing on the following:
- Empathy: You have done your audience research and behavioural analysis and you know your audience’s pain points. Can you relate to their problems? Without empathy, it is much harder to design campaigns that solve problems. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and treat customers as real people rather than leads to shift along the funnel.
- Listening: Listening goes beyond audience research. What are your current and prospective customers saying? What feedback do you get, and are you using that feedback constructively? Listening means genuinely wanting to know what you are doing right and what you are doing wrong so that you can give your audience what they want rather than what you think they want.
- Tailoring: Personalisation is a good start. That does not mean simply segmenting your lists, creating personas, and using first name tags. You need to start thinking out of the box on how you can add more to the customer experience, long before leads become customers. That is where empathy and listening come into play, allowing you to create hyper-personalised campaigns.
- Relationships: Finally, it is essential to remember that you are forging relationships and not just trying to sell. Relationships are meant to benefit you and your customers. Stop thinking of potential leads as numbers to score and start thinking of how you can grow together. This will make customers feel valued right from the start.
Human-Centred Lead Generation
When you are running multiple campaigns across all of your digital marketing platforms, it can be easy to lose that human element. Putting the focus back onto your customers will help you plan rewarding lead generation campaigns that attract and convert customers for long-term relationships designed for growth.