McKenna Design Group

In today’s environment, marketers must design and implement complex campaigns and justify investments in new initiatives. With everything that goes into building and executing new campaigns, marketers can lose focus on the most important factor in marketing: creating genuine connections with audiences.

This is a problem because the connection that marketers make, or fail to make, with their audiences can make or break campaigns. Your marketing must have real, human qualities. The more human you make your communications, the easier it will be for people to connect.

Fortunately, there’s a strategy that can ensure your marketing is always personal and relatable: human-to-human (H2H) marketing.

H2H marketing is about creating memorable, authentic experiences. It puts the audience in the center of all communications by associating your organization with their specific wants, needs and desires. It allows marketers to build genuine relationships with audiences by connecting to them through understanding, storytelling and personalization. In one word, empathy.

Here’s how to make sure that your marketing always has a human touch.

1. Understand Your Target Market

The first step in H2H marketing is to conduct a survey to get to know your audience.

You should ask questions that are relevant to your organization to find out what they’re interested in and what motivates them. In addition to business-related questions, ask personal questions to glean little nuggets you can use in your copy for added personality.

Your organization needs to come across as “real”; thus, your strategy needs to be grounded in real insights about your audience.

2. Tell a Compelling Story

Once you have conducted the survey, you need to use that information to tell a compelling story. People respond to stories because they are relatable. They want to know “why you do what you do” as well as “what you do.”

Create a story that embodies your values, mission and the change your organization seeks to make in the world. Demonstrate the value your organization brings to others.

Your story should permeate everything you do: from your identity, to your messaging and throughout all of your communications. Your story should “speak” to your audience. It should be consistent across all media. And most of all, it should sound “human.”

3. Build Connections through Personalization

The last step in creating a successful H2H marketing strategy is personalization.

When you send out communications, be engaging. Start a dialog. Ask them follow-up questions, pay attention to what they respond to and most of all, send them relevant content. Talk “to” them — don’t talk “at” them. Show them you care and are invested in the relationship.

Marketing automation is especially powerful here. With marketing automation, you can see which content your audience is engaging with, track which emails they open and understand how your relationship with them is progressing. Personalization helps your organization build trust and develop long-term relationships and desired outcomes.

So how good is your H2H marketing? If you need to give your marketing a more human touch, a great way to start is with surveys, human-centered messaging and marketing automation.

Download our eBook to learn how marketing automation can make your marketing more human.

When you think about member engagement, do you only think about targeting your current members? If so, you’re missing out on two-thirds of your engagement opportunities! Your member engagement strategy needs to target more than just your established members—it needs to include both prospective and new members as well.

The key to successful member engagement is proving your association’s relevance to the people you serve. You must understand their wants, needs, values and aspirations. Once you know this, you need to position your association to deliver those things. All of your communications and branding should reinforce your message.

The hard part is that you need to “speak” to different groups. And that means you can’t use a cookie-cutter approach here. You need to appeal to each of these groups with a targeted plan.

In our guide, “11 Tips for Creating and Sustaining Member Engagement,” you’ll learn proven member engagement strategies that work in the key stages of the member lifecycle: recruiting, onboarding and ongoing membership. And after reading the guide, you’ll have a good sense of whether you are taking advantage of all of your engagement opportunities and get some fresh ideas for improving your strategy.

Sound good? Then download the guide: 11 Tips for Creating and Sustaining Member Engagement