Stop Being A Robot To Connect With Your Customers

Ideas in the Wild is a new Luminate series where we bring non-fiction books from the page into the real world, by learning how the authors apply their book’s lessons in their own lives.

We’ve all heard this before:

• “Your satisfaction is very important to us.”
• “We’re here to serve you.”
• “Your experience is our priority.”

But here’s the problem with corporate speak: it means nothing.

We’ve heard it all so many times that we don’t believe it. It has zero impact. It’s sanitized, run-of-the-mill, and robotic. There’s an obvious intention with this kind of purposefully bland communication: it’s neutral. It runs zero risk of offending anyone.

But it’s also massively inauthentic, and people pick up on that from a mile away.

Phillip Stutts is a leading political marketer. In his new book, Fire Them Now, he teaches business owners how to apply the lessons from political marketing to grow their businesses.

I caught up with Phillip to get his input on how businesses can humanize themselves (in the same way he humanizes candidates) to authentically connect with their customers and create lasting relationships.

Nobody Likes A Robot

One of the most important concepts in politics is the idea of humanizing your messaging for your audience.

“Companies these days are afraid to show any kind of vulnerability, but what they forget is that vulnerability is exactly what people want to see — because it proves you’re human, and it resonates. People want to buy into a personality or a company with a purpose, someone or something they can relate to,” Phillip told me.

This core need or authentic human connection has been forgotten or ignored by most politicians and companies, so we just roll our eyes at most of the canned, rehearsed, gobbledygook messaging that we see in all forms of advertising.

As Phillip explained: “It comes across as having been strained through filters, conference rooms, and battling egos within the bureaucracy. People don’t want to be told what shareholders or some robot thinks they want to hear. They want to buy in to something or someone real.”

Corporate Language Undermines Your Chance To Connect With Customers

You can almost hear the appeal for corporate-speak from shareholders: be pleasant and harmless, don’t mess anything up, and maximize their chance of doing business with us in the future!

But if your intention is to build a long-term relationship with customers in a crowded market, connecting emotionally with your customers is a great foundation. Using corporate, sanitized messaging robs you of the opportunity to create authentic long-lasting relationships with your audience.

In an effort to be squeaky clean, you can accidentally scrub off everything that made anyone care in the first place.

“Make yourself real to your customers,” Phillip told me. “Be someone they can get behind. It’s the difference between a transaction and a relationship — and relationships are what will make your business thrive.”

You can find more of Phillip’s ideas in his book, Fire Them Now: The 7 Lies Digital Marketers Sell…And the Truth about Political Strategies that Help Businesses Win.

Original Story: https://justluminate.com/article/1605879/stop-being-a-robot-to-connect-with-your-customers?v=1