Empathy in Marketing: How To Connect With Customers & Drive Brand Loyalty

Few things are as valuable to a business as a loyal customer. But earning loyalty is difficult. To do it, you’ll need to build emotional connections with your target audience, a task often easier said than done. 

It’s also one worth pursuing. Harvard Business Review says that "emotionally connected" customers are 52% more valuable, on average, than those who are merely "highly satisfied." Connecting with your customers could result in a major increase in profits to fuel your next stage of growth.

One underrated (but highly effective) strategy that can help you get there is empathetic marketing. Brands that use it tend to outperform in terms of trust and customer retention, but it’s not always easy to leverage. So, how can you use empathy in marketing to build emotional connections and drive loyalty? 

Keep reading to find best practices, tips from experts, and more guidance to get you started.

Why Empathy Matters in Marketing Today

First, it’s important to define what empathy means within the context of marketing. In general, it refers to understanding and acting on customers’ feelings, perspectives, and needs. But why does that matter? Here are three key reasons:

• Customer expectations: Seventy-five percent of customers today value brand transparency and authenticity. Showing empathy in your marketing helps you connect with this group by showing them what you stand for.
• Rise of human-centric brands: More brands are adopting a human-centric approach, prioritizing people’s needs in every part of the business. Dove’s Self-Esteem Project is a great example of this. These companies tend to outperform on trust, thanks largely to their consistent empathy for their target audience.
• Crises and cultural sensitivity: Studies show 89% of people are loyal to brands that share their values. That figure has grown in recent years as social media has amplified the impact of cultural issues and crises. Today’s consumers expect the companies they buy from to stand up for what’s right, and showing empathy in your marketing is one of the best ways to do that.

Another reason to use empathetic marketing is  the impact it can have on reach. When your ads feature a message that aligns with your audience’s core values, they’ll be more likely to share it with others. 

This type of content also tends to be emotionally charged, which can spark online conversations and put your company at the center of them. This can increase brand awareness and help you form the kinds of emotional bonds that lead to loyalty.

How To Practice Empathy in Your Marketing Strategy

Empathy can be a powerful tool for growing your business, but it can also be hard to get right. Your message must walk a fine line between connecting with your audience and achieving your conversion goals. Embracing the following tips can help you make it happen.

1. Customer-centric messaging
2. Active listening
3. Personalized content
4. Inclusive marketing
5. Purpose-driven campaigns

Customer-Centric Messaging

First, your message should be centered around customers’ values. Christopher Savage, president and founder of Savage Global Marketing, explains: “People can smell fake empathy from a mile away. It’s not about checking a box, it’s about actually understanding your audience and speaking to what they’re feeling.”

A key step is to use language that reflects your customers’ experiences and emotions around the issue you’re speaking to. For example, a company that wants to share a message of sustainability would want to use language that mirrors how its target audience talks about the issue.

This idea leverages the similarity-attraction effect from psychology, a widely observed phenomenon where people are more likely to form positive relationships with those who share common traits or characteristics. So, your goal is to position your brand to be on the “same side” of an issue as its target audience.

Active Listening

The next step is to figure out how your audience is speaking about the issue you want to address. This will help you draft a customer-centric message that mirrors their language and encourages emotional connection. You can use several strategies, one of which is social listening.

You can monitor social media to see how customers are speaking about your brand, its industry, and other companies in it. This can help you understand target audience pain points, how they talk about them, and the kinds of solutions they imagine. 

Platforms like X, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn can all be beneficial for social monitoring. Try to track the sites that your audience uses most frequently. This will help you keep your pulse on the conversation, so you can evolve your message as needed over time.

You can also use feedback loops to refine your approach. For example, you might come up with an idea based on social listening, develop an ad to target it, and then test a few versions of that ad on a small segment of your audience. You could track KPIs like engagement rates and overall reach to see what messaging performs best and adopt it moving forward.

Personalized Content

Once you have a general approach you’d like to use, try to express it in personalized content. For example, if you want to connect with your audience on sustainability, you could tell a story centered on an individual who’s representative of your target audience. 

This speaks to the individual customer instead of the demographic. A target audience member might see themselves in the story and relate to your brand through it. That’s why Savage says it’s important to “Use real stories, real voices, and don’t wrap it all in a sales pitch.”

It could also make sense to tell several versions of a similar story to connect with different segments of your audience. For instance, a company focused on sustainability might tell a story about a young person concerned about their future and another story about a senior worrying about their grandchildren. 

This approach can help you connect with distinct groups who care about the issue you’re addressing.

Inclusive Marketing

It’s also important to represent diverse perspectives honestly when designing your empathetic marketing campaign. People can feel more than one way about an issue, and you want your company to appeal to as many perspectives as possible.

You can create more inclusive marketing materials by:

• Building a diverse team that reflects your target audience’s different values
• Collaborating with diverse creators who look, speak, or act like your ideal buyer
• Conducting thorough research to avoid misunderstandings and stereotypes
• Testing new campaigns across multiple demographics to assess their inclusivity before spreading the message far and wide

By prioritizing inclusivity at every stage, you ensure your marketing resonates authentically with a wider, more diverse audience.

Purpose-Driven Campaigns

Finally, consider building your empathy-focused campaigns around causes that your customers care about. This will encourage social sharing, spark conversation, and help your brand cut through the noise.

The key will be talking about the issue you target authentically. For example, you can’t go on and on about sustainability if your company doesn’t use sustainable business practices. Customers see through that, and it’ll hurt your brand instead of helping it.

Backing your message up with actions is one of the best ways to look more authentic when talking about an important issue. For instance, a company focused on clean practices might pledge to plant a certain number of trees annually as part of a campaign to spread climate change awareness.

You can even tie your mission-driven actions to sales goals. For example, you could donate a percentage of every purchase to a charity that supports a mission your customers care about. This can increase revenue today while helping your business form emotional connections to create tomorrow’s loyal customers.

Measuring the Impact of Empathy in Marketing

It can be hard to measure the direct impact of adopting a more empathetic marketing approach. But there are some KPIs worth tracking, including:

• Testimonials: To see how customers talk about your brand before and after you share your new message
• Repeat purchases: Comparing figures before and after your marketing shift to measure changes in loyalty
• Referrals: To see if these increase after your empathy-driven campaign
• Social sentiment: Watching how the conversation evolves as your company makes its stance clear

Remember, the goal of empathetic marketing is to spark emotional connections that create customer loyalty. So, any metrics you currently use to track loyalty should be helpful in determining whether your message is working. When these KPIs improve, you’ll know that you’re on the right track.

What To Avoid With Empathy in Marketing

Let’s wrap up by reviewing some common mistakes to avoid when using empathetic marketing. Here are some tips:

• Avoid performative empathy: Customers know when a brand is “faking it." If you don’t actually believe the message you’re promoting (and follow through with actions), your reputation could be damaged. It’s better to avoid empathetic marketing entirely than to share a message that only sort of reflects your company's values.
• Focus on understanding your audience: When you don’t have a clear understanding of how customers feel about an issue, it can lead to tone-deaf campaigns that alienate your audience.
• Don’t use AI: Natalie Henley, CEO and owner of Volume Nine Digital Marketing, says it’s important for these campaigns to come from real people within your company: “I'd say this is a great time to NOT use AI to write the messaging, so that it sounds human, then if you are having a gut-check concern about it sounding opportunistic, run it past a few people internally.”
• Avoid over-personalization: Personalizing your message can help you connect with different segments within your target audience. But over-personalization can start to feel invasive. You may want to test your approach before going to market to make sure you’re striking the right balance.

It’s also worth considering the fact that consumer values can change over time. They don’t always, but you don’t want your company to be caught on the wrong side of an issue that later evolves. This can create future problems for the brand.

That’s why it’s important to think very carefully before addressing any especially controversial subjects. It may still be worth approaching if the issue really aligns with your brand’s values. But it’s a risk that you should only take if you’re doing so with your eyes wide open to the potential downsides.

Drive Customer Loyalty Through Empathy

Practicing more empathy in your marketing could be exactly what your brand needs to connect with its target audience. The right strategy can create emotional connections that drive loyalty through value alignment. Just make sure to really research your audience’s perspective before starting and focus on inclusive personalization to expand your impact.

Whether your company is just starting out or looking to shake things up, empathetic marketing can be a powerful tool for driving sustained revenue. If you need help developing a strategy, it may be worth partnering with an agency that can refine your message.
 

About the Author

Anna Peck Content Marketing Manager at Clutch

Anna Peck is a content marketing manager at Clutch, where she crafts content on digital marketing, SEO, and public relations. In addition to editing and producing engaging B2B content, she plays a key role in Clutch’s awards program and contributed content efforts. Originally joining Clutch as part of the reviews team, she now focuses on developing SEO-driven content strategies that offer valuable insights to B2B buyers seeking the best service providers.

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