Note: This blog was updated November 2024.
As a B2B company, you may think it’s necessary to keep a corporate demeanor in everything you do. But the truth is, humanizing your brand can help you connect with clients naturally – and then naturally stand out. Here’s how you can make that happen.
6 Simple Ways to Humanize Your B2B Brand
When you have a B2B brand, it can be easy to fall into the mindset that your marketing must remain formal at all times just because you’re talking to other businesses. But the reality is you’re marketing to the people who happen to work at those companies. Therefore, you want your brand to resonate with current and potential customers by connecting with them on an emotional level.
This is called humanizing your B2B brand. It involves understanding your customers’ needs and values and using that understanding to create an engaging and meaningful experience. This can be done through storytelling, visuals, content and other tactics that create an emotional connection between you and your customers.
In today’s highly competitive business environment, having a humanized brand can give you a distinct advantage. It helps to build trust and loyalty among customers, which leads to increased sales and repeat customers. You also create an atmosphere of transparency and authenticity, which is essential in a business-to-business setting. This transparency can help to build relationships with customers, allowing them to feel comfortable and confident in doing business with you.
But how can your B2B brand make itself more human? Here are six tips.
How to Humanize Your B2B Brand: 6 Tips
Develop a Unique Voice
Developing a unique voice helps to humanize your B2B brand by making it more relatable and memorable. When you have a distinct voice that customers can easily recognize and connect with, your B2B gains a personality and builds trust.
So, how can you make it happen? The key: Don’t be afraid to get creative! How would you talk with a friend about your company in real life? Challenge yourself: How can I make my subject matter expertise even more exciting, especially to outsiders?
Basically, talking like the human that you are (no AI robots, here!) is a surefire way to sound just like the human … that you are.
Showcase Your Values
Highlighting your values emphasizes the people behind your B2B brand and the mission that drives you. By showing the values and beliefs that are core to your business, you create a connection with customers, helping to build trust and loyalty.
You can do this by including a page on your website that showcases your core values. But don’t just tell … show. Share social media posts about causes your B2B brand is passionate about, especially pictures or stories of your team actively involved with these causes.
By emphasizing your values, customers will be more likely to identify with your brand and be inspired by the greater mission that you are striving for.
Share Authentic Stories
Sharing authentic stories is a great way to humanize your B2B brand. Genuine and authentic stories give your brand a personality, making it more relatable and engaging for customers. It can also help to build trust in your brand, as customers can better understand your values and beliefs.
Sharing stories from customers or employees can help showcase how your products or services have impacted real people, making them more likely to look to you for solutions.
Plus, stories can help to create an emotional connection with your audience and make them feel more connected to your company.
Offer Personalized Experiences
Personalized experiences help humanize your B2B brand by creating meaningful connections with customers that show that your brand understands and values them as individuals. By tailoring content, messages, and experiences to each customer, your brand can demonstrate that it cares about their needs and wants.
And when customers can customize their experiences, they feel like they are being heard and that their opinions matter. This leads to increased customer loyalty, satisfaction, and engagement.
Ultimately, by providing a personalized experience, B2B brands can create a more human relationship with their customers. Take the time to get to know your customers and cater your services to their specific needs.
Create Engaging Visuals
B2B customers want to connect with your brand, and one of the most impactful ways of doing that is by incorporating interesting visuals into your marketing. Visuals evoke emotion, draw customers in, and convey important messages, such as your company’s values, mission and goals.
Another way to build that personal connection is by leveraging visuals that demonstrate how your product or service solves customer problems and how it can benefit them. A great way to execute this is with video. You know your product or service solves a problem for your customer. With a combination of on-screen text, a voice-over, stock or recorded video footage, walk through that problem and show how your solution undoes that problem.
|
Method |
Why It’s Crucial |
Potential Impact |
|
Develop a Unique Voice |
Establishes relatability and memorability. |
Builds trust and creates a distinct brand identity. |
|
Showcase Your Values |
Demonstrates authenticity and builds connections. |
Fosters trust, loyalty, and emotional resonance. |
|
Share Authentic Stories |
Creates relatability and builds trust. |
Establishes emotional connections and credibility. |
|
Offer Personalized Experiences |
Demonstrates care and understanding. |
Increases customer loyalty and satisfaction. |
|
Create Engaging Visuals |
Evokes emotion and conveys messages effectively. |
Enhances brand perception and engagement. |
|
Have Fun on Social Media |
Facilitates personal connections and engagement. |
Builds brand loyalty and strengthens relationships. |
Have Fun on Social Media
Social media can be a powerful tool for humanizing your B2B brand. Through this channel, you can connect with your customers in a more personal way and communicate directly with them. Build relationships with your customers and prospects by sharing valuable content and engaging in conversations. You can also use social media for customer service and to build brand loyalty.
Social media is useful for sharing stories and showcasing your company culture, values, and mission. This helps create a more personal connection with your customers and allows them to relate to your brand on a more human level.
Conclusion: Humans Respond Better to Humanized B2B Brands
Humanizing your B2B brand can elevate you above the competition by telling your story and building relationships with clients. To humanize your brand, start by creating a unique voice, highlighting your values, offering authentic stories, providing personalized experiences, making engaging visuals, and using social media to your advantage.
