The top 5 ways to use human-to-human (H2H) marketing
22 July 2024
As humans, we naturally crave connection and community. Our desire for genuine relationships is a fundamental part of who we are and greatly influences our interactions with others. That's why studies show that 70% of consumers prefer to connect with brands that feel authentic and relatable. This is why human-to-human (H2H) marketing is now an important strategy in business communication. By focusing on personal interactions and emotional connections, H2H marketing helps brands resonate more deeply with their audience, building loyalty and trust.
In this article, we’ll explore the shift from B2B marketing to H2H marketing and why it matters. We’ll define H2H marketing, discuss its benefits for organizations and customers, and highlight five effective strategies to implement it.
What is human to human marketing (H2H)?
Human-to-human marketing (H2H) highlights the essential fact that people prefer to buy from other people. This approach encourages businesses to view customers as unique individuals instead of just ‘personas’ or market segments. Customer have become tired of robotic, generic and overly automated marketing strategies. They want feel valued and served almost instantly – or they'll go elsewhere. This requires a human approach that combines empathy, connection and conversation.
H2H marketing helps organizations highlight their human qualities and create real connections with the people they represent. This approach focuses on building relationships that go beyond simple transactions. By encouraging meaningful one-on-one interactions on a larger scale, these organizations can communicate more authentically and be seen as more human by their customers.
How human-to-human (H2H) marketing differs from other marketing strategies
Human-to-human (H2H) marketing is an evolution beyond traditional B2B (business-to-business) and B2C (business-to-consumer) marketing strategies. This approach reconnects marketing with its roots, resembling a "back to the future" moment where organizations once again focus on genuine customer relationships, enhanced by modern digital technology.
Embracing H2H marketing is essential for personalizing customer experiences and fostering one-on-one interactions. However, to effectively implement this strategy at scale, businesses must leverage technology to tackle the challenges and costs associated with personalized marketing.
While other B2B and B2C strategies have successfully scaled, they often reduced customers to mere numbers rather than recognizing their individuality. By prioritizing human connections in marketing, brands can improve customer engagement and build lasting relationships.
Why is human-to-human marketing (H2H) so effective?
H2H marketing is effective for several key reasons:
Enhances customer experience: H2H marketing creates personalized and emotionally engaging experiences, which build trust, loyalty, and deeper connections with your brand.
Encourages authenticity: By fostering genuine interactions, H2H marketing promotes authenticity in business communication, making customers more likely to trust transparent brands.
Creates meaningful connections: This human-to-human approach allows businesses to understand customer needs on a deeper level, leading to relationships that extend beyond simple transactions.
Increases customer retention: When customers feel valued and connected, they are more likely to become repeat buyers and enthusiastic advocates for your brand.
Builds trust and credibility: H2H marketing nurtures trust and credibility through authentic interactions and transparency, fostering long-term relationships and generating positive word of mouth.
How do you apply human-to-human marketing to existing marketing practices?
H2H marketing marks a major shift in how we think. A key first step is to adjust your marketing strategy to see customers and stakeholders as individuals. Emphasize the human aspects of your brand, allowing for more conversational and empathetic interactions that create better experiences.
Along with this fundamental change, here are five ways to incorporate human-to-human marketing into your existing practices.
1. Be more human and stop selling all the time
Human interactions involve more than just understanding, anticipating, and empathizing with another person's perspective. Marketers who think that's all it takes for successful 'human-to-human marketing' overlook a crucial part of the puzzle: self-awareness. Self-awareness guides behavior, influencing how we act in various situations.
Human-to-human marketing goes beyond just communicating value; it actually embodies value. Brands can achieve this by using marketing to:
Identify customer challenges and pain points.
Engage communities to share challenges and solutions.
Promote customer success stories showcasing product impact.
Share valuable content that helps solve problems, not just sales pitches.
2. Tell a story with human-to-human marketing
One of the key human traits is our ability to communicate through storytelling. Stories resonate with people because they naturally understand their structure and meaning. This makes storytelling a more engaging and effective method than traditional marketing. When people hear a well-told, relatable story, they see themselves as active participants in the narrative. Plus, stories are easier to remember; our brains process them more effectively than data sheets or statistics.
When marketers tell stories, they move away from corporate jargon, making their content more relatable and human. By using simple words, engaging analogies, and a bit of humor, they connect with their audience. Storytelling promotes honesty and transparency, even if it shows flaws, breaking down barriers and making brands feel genuine. Research supports this, showing that 77% of people believe brands should share stories, and over half (55%) are more likely to buy from companies whose brand stories resonate with them.
3. Use human-to-human marketing with personalization and automation
Scaling marketing, especially human-to-human marketing, is a challenge. This approach usually involves crafting personalized marketing engagements and offers, which takes more effort for each customer. As a result, it can become impractical even before you begin.
Getting this right is crucial. According to McKinsey, about 75% of consumers:
Feel frustrated by messages that aren't personally relevant
Are more likely to engage with a brand if the marketing is personalized
Often feel overwhelmed by emails
Get annoyed by too many irrelevant offers or content
The best approach is to combine personalization and automation. People value automation when it benefits them. A clear example is how companies manage chat interactions on their websites and apps using chatbots and human agents. Chatbots help customers find answers independently from a knowledge base. If that doesn't resolve the issue, the chatbot can escalate the inquiry to a human agent.
4. Harness all the channels you own to humanize marketing
Just as a real person responds based on how you address them, brands must engage with audiences across all communication channels. They should demonstrate a clear understanding of each customer, regardless of when or where they want to connect. While humans manage this through memory, companies often struggle when customers switch between channels.
The key is an omnichannel strategy supported by technology. Omnichannel marketing enables customers to have seamless conversations with a brand throughout their journey, without needing to repeat steps. Brands must deliver a consistent experience across all channels and ensure interactions are easy and efficient, as customers prefer quick and simple engagement.
Omnichannel is a two-way street that allows brands to communicate proactively while respecting customers' preferred ways to be contacted. By adopting a human-to-human marketing approach, brands can enhance their omnichannel strategy by timing their communications for maximum effect, such as sending a follow-up email after a hotel guest checks out. While this may seem considerate, it’s often automated.
Additionally, human-to-human marketing encourages indirect communication with customers through user-generated content, which often shares personal stories that add credibility to the brand.
5. Leverage email signatures for human-to-human marketing
Keeping brand consistency across communication channels can be tough, especially when some organizations focus on specific channels while ignoring others. One important channel is email signatures, which are highly trusted, especially in B2B settings. Unlike marketing emails, one-to-one business emails represent personal communication, making email signatures the last impression recipients see. Each signature is a chance to strengthen the brand, promote key calls to action, and share essential contact information.
Many marketers now use email signatures to create personalized brand interactions. Business emails are trusted and often read, making the email signature a valuable marketing asset.
Key takeaways
Humanizing your marketing strategy is a powerful way to connect with customers and attract new ones. The human-to-human (H2H) marketing approach allows you to stand out from competitors and engage your audience on a personal level. By crafting relatable and personable content, H2H marketing ensures that your messages resonate with your target audience.
When potential customers encounter your ad campaigns, blog posts, or social media videos that speak to them as individuals, they are more likely to engage with your brand. To maximize engagement and drive conversions, focus on building authentic connections through humanized marketing efforts.
Use Exclaimer to boost your human-to-human marketing strategies
Exclaimer's email signature management solution allow your organization to include consistent, humanized email signatures across all departments and employees. With Exclaimer, you can create targeted and personalized campaigns within every single business email sent from your organization, making it a powerful tool for implementing H2H marketing strategies.
Try Exclaimer today with a free trial or book an online demonstration to see how easy it is to incorporate human-to-human marketing into your business emails.
