Empathy engagement is key to relationship building. It’s the marketing path to creating long-term loyal fans and relationships.
But you won’t find what you need in a ream of demographics. Numbers and statistics don’t tell you what their thinking, feeling, or how they are responding to you.
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Before I moved into full-time copywriting marketing, I worked in the beauty industry. I helped thousands of women feel better, more confident, and happier because I solved problems for them.
I offered cosmetic and medical skin pigmentation, tattooing. Women with missing brow hair or busy lives loved eyebrows and eyeliner—makeup that stayed put.
However, the clients I engaged the deepest with were recovering from breast cancer.
I knew exactly how it felt to go through the trauma of diagnosis, surgery, chemotherapy, and reconstruction. I had been there myself. There is no going back; there is only moving forward.
They’d tell me their story. Each was unique. Then they often wanted to know mine. We engaged.
And then we started their journey to healing. The addition of 3-D color to a bare mound profoundly impacts how you see yourself in the mirror. The result offered liberation from the physical and psychological angst they had gone through.
It is tough to truly understand what’s going on inside your client’s head if you haven’t “walked in their shoes.”
Physically having had your prospects’ problem is powerful. Fortunately, there are ways around it. And even in a group of people who share a common problem, they don’t react the same way.
I had to learn to quickly spot how each client was coping and adapt my strategies to help them. It’s the same with our marketing. We have to take into account the different segments within our prospects.
Messages have to shift based on where the prospect is in their journey. You need to determine their level of awareness.
Those messages also have to be adapted based on their beliefs, biases, and personal experiences. But it all starts with research.
I didn’t develop this, but I did learn from an expert. The absolute master of empathy marketing was Eugene Schwartz, and he shares his secrets in a book called “Breakthrough Advertising.” (It's available through Titans Marketing, LLC.)
It’s not a quick read. The book is intense and requires rereading and study, but the secrets are there to unfold.
There are many marketers who “think” they know the client and charge off to create their marketing. The resulting response and sales will be lower than if research were completed.
It’s like trying to put a puzzle together with some of the pieces missing. Your prospect sees the holes.
Holes in your marketing puzzle weaken or break trust. And this loss of trust is apt to cause disengagement, loss of the sale, and loss of lifetime customer value.
Research is where it starts. You have to dive into both your prospective buyer’s mind and into what you are offering—product or service.
With completed research you have the tools to employ emotion, empathy, and your message.
All human desires can be placed into one of three categories. They fall into better health, increased wealth, and relationships. But we can’t stop with this superficial analysis.
What part of health do they want to improve? Why? What have they tried before? What were the results? The list of whats, whys, and hows can be extensive. It’s easy to stop too soon.
Keep in mind they are people and unique, but it is possible to find common denominators.
You want to discover what they will tell you about their need. Then seek out the underlying what they won’t tell you. Go deeper to get to the emotional what they can’t tell you. Now you understand their core motivator—something they have so locked away in their brain it may be a secret even to them.
You’ll also do an analysis of the features and benefits of what you are selling. The features describe the physical product. You’ll want to create a detailed list.
Then dive into the benefits. Benefits are how it helps the buyer. “What it does.” That’s what people buy. They want the results.
You’ll want to know the USP—what makes this a unique solution, why and how. You’ll need to know its competition and gather proof and credibility.
What do your customers say about your product? LIkes, dislikes, questions, suggestions are all valuable.
Now that you know both your prospect and your product, you can start matching. You build connections or bridges between their needs and your solution.
Match the prospect’s desires and the product benefits/performances. Paint them pictures of how it’s going to make their life better. Whether in copy or content format, you help them discover why your product is the solution.
We all have the same emotions. Use words and images to make them smile, laugh, cry, feel joy or pain. Those emotions create experiences to inspire, connect and motivate them with our messages.
Look for ways to employ emotions and feelings to help them experience the benefits and results of the product. Through persuasive techniques, you move them along their journey until they have to buy. Then nurture and support them.
Ready to attract new buyers, increase lifetime buyer value, build sales, and more engagement? You need empathy-engaging content and copywriting. Let’s have a quick chat. You can message me: [email protected].
Judith Culp Pearson receives three top honors
at the annual Society of Permanent Cosmetic Professionals in
Ft. Worth, Texas - October 7-9, 2023
