Let’s Not Forget: Customers Are Human

It used to be (and still often is) that, when talking about marketing, everyone talked about B2B and B2C. Companies either marketed to businesses (B2B) or to consumers (B2C). Businesses and consumers were considered two very different animals and marketing content and channels were very different for each. Then, we started to talk about “B2B2C.” This was an acknowledgement that your business customers, even though they were an IT manager, a facilities manager, a HR manager, the CMO, the CFO, etc., were people after all. Despite the fact that they represent a company, they had feelings just like the rest of us. Imagine that! I think Bryan Kramer says it the most eloquently in his post, “There is no more B2B or B2C: It’s Human to Human, #H2H.”

So, if we throw away B2B and B2C and start talking about H2H, what does that mean to how you market your company? It’s just not that complicated. We just need to keep in mind that we are communicating with people. It’s really that simple.

Our customers, whether they are IT managers representing their company or a woman representing herself, are human. As such, they have feelings, dreams, aspirations, concerns, fears, and problems just like we do. We have one job: To help our customers overcome their challenges and solve their problems, to give them something of value, and to build a relationship with them…a long term relationship built on mutual trust, where they come to respect and value our brand and buy our products or services because they believe they make their lives better in some way. And, we do that by communicating to our customers authentically, human to human, in simple, emotional language.

That’s it. That’s all we have to do. (Easier said than done, I know!)

Do you agree that we should treat all our customers as humans with no distinction between those that represent companies and those that represent themselves?

Picture by Anna Dziubinska

#marketing #B2B #B2C #H2H #people #customer #customers #human