B2B brands all over the world are turning to humanising their marketing strategy in order to connect and engage with their target audience in a more efficient manner. Brands want their communication to showcase empathy, care and trust and 97% of B2B marketers believe that humanisation is the way forward for that approach. A study revealed that in spite of wanting to use humanisation, two-thirds of B2B marketers said they struggled to do so or did not know where to begin. Only 26% of B2B marketers have successfully managed to implement a humanisation strategy for their brands.

A study conducted by Allison+Partners in collaboration with Censuswide, a British research and polling company found that 35% of B2B marketers struggled to understand their customers’ purchase journey at various stages of the sales funnel. The report also revealed that 36% of marketers realised the importance of personalising communication but 57% have not yet created buyer personas or audience segments for targeted campaigns.

A major problem faced by B2B marketers is that they struggle to understand the wants and needs of their audience. This makes it difficult to connect with them as they are unable to predict their habits and behaviour. The cause of this problem is the fact that they have not conducted primary research to understand the needs and challenges of their audience in the last 12 months. Because of this, they have not been able to tailor communication to specific stakeholders nor create the right personas and audience segments for various targeted campaigns.

Additionally, since B2B marketing has traditionally been straightforward and direct, marketers find it difficult to get stakeholder buy-in for developing such targeted campaigns. So, for B2B businesses and marketers looking to personalise and humanise their marketing strategy and who are looking for ways to improve stakeholder buy-in, here are four steps to help you achieve your goals:

Four Steps To Improve Stakeholder Buy-in:

Introducing change in an organisation is never easy. But with the right communication and proper processes, it is possible to get stakeholder buy-in to change at an early stage which can help the adoption rate in the company. Here is how you can get started:

Step One:

Take some time to identify at least one person from the team who will be responsible for ensuring stakeholder buy-in. This person needs to have great communication skills and some experience with change management or large-scale programme management. This will help to ensure that stakeholder buy-in is a priority at every stage of the process and is not ignored along the way.

Step Two:

Next, figure out a way to understand the baseline buy-in level of your stakeholders regarding the campaign. This can be done through interviews and surveys. This will help you understand their concerns better and figure out ways to help to solve them. This step is essential as it will give you relevant details and information to craft your communication strategy to ensure stakeholder buy-in for your humanisation approach.

Step Three:

Based on the information gathered in the previous step, make a list of all the specific actions senior leaders will need to take to ensure stakeholder buy-ins at every level of the organisation. This could include sending out communications through email, speaking at meetings, presentations, etc. Based on the information gathered, all the relevant communication should be drafted and step-by-step instructions must be created for the project at hand.

Step Four:

After sending out the relevant communication, interviews and surveys need to be conducted to measure progress. It is essential to understand this information so that relevant changes and adjustments can be made along the way.

Once you have your key stakeholders on board with your humanisation campaign, you can start implementing your campaign and use the insights to create target audience personas for personalisation of communication.