When you buy a product or service, are you doing it for the actual product or service or what it will bring to your life or the lives of people you care about? Chances are, you answered the later…
We buy the sweater because we want our friends to think we look stylish. We buy the fancy cheese to make a cheese tray to entertain the people we care about. We buy the college sweatshirt to show everyone how smart we are.
The list goes on… but the underlying theme remains… we buy things for our own personal reasons, for other people, or for how those other people will perceive us.
With all this focus on people and the personal, why does marketing get so stiff? We try so hard in marketing to make everything look so finished, so perfect, so produced, that we often forget what our customers really want to see… the personal. It’s a tough change to make, especially since we’ve spent several decades putting said perfection over personal connection. But you know what they say… it’s never too late to change.
Since I know change is hard, today I am going to help you baby step into it with three very simple things you can do to make your digital presence more personal.
- Change the “from” line in your marketing emails from your company’s name to a person’s name. I know, I know… this is really HARD to do. It feels all kinds of uncomfortable… but I promise it will vastly increase your open rate. Assuming you are sending weekly emails, you should see improvements in four to six weeks.
- Make all of your social media profile pictures of actual real people. Your logo is beautiful, meaningful, and amazing. It belongs in many places… the upper left corner of your website being one of them. It doesn’t belong on your social media profile pictures. Your social media is just that… social. People are social. People power companies. People make us buy things. Logos are just fancy things that reinforce that the people we are following belong to a brand we really like. Note: If you can’t decide who should represent your company in a profile picture, a group of people in a profile picture works, too. Don’t you like the photo of actual business owners featured above a lot better than a picture of a logo? That would make a great profile picture.
And to the person out there saying “my company is too big and formal to do this,” research proves otherwise. Give it a chance and enjoy the social lift.
- Tell social stories all the time. Your customers have stories. Your employees have stories. Your employees wear green on St. Patrick’s Day. Your customers wear cat ears on Halloween. Show people doing these social things across your social networks. The line between the personal and professional has blurred. That doesn’t mean you have to tell your deepest darkest secrets on social media, but no company ever lost engagement by showing employees participating in their local food bank’s food drive, right? (That’s right… just in case you were wondering.)
To my dear marketing friends out there who edit, refine, and repeat… I see you. I know you were trained that way. I know it’s hard to let go of that formal logo-in-the-profile-look (I struggle with it too). But if you do try some of all of these suggestions, please drop me a line at [email protected] and let me know how it works out. I am rooting for you and your personal success!
