14 Ways to Use Empathy Marketing in B2B SaaS Content
If your content marketing isn’t hitting the mark, there could be a big reason why: it doesn’t connect with your customers through empathy. According to Forrester, nearly 60% of B2B tech buyers feel that the content they’re provided is largely “useless.”
This study came in 2019, by all accounts a simpler time. Today, customer expectations are even higher. Coming out of Covid, there’s a more human, more personal element to successful marketing, likely a response to everything from inspirational commercials to crowdsourced social campaigns that asked people to get creative from quarantine.
The pandemic allowed us to drop some of the pretense and formality typically associated with B2B SaaS marketing—and that’s a good thing.
To resonate with users today, content marketing needs to leverage ways to connect with customers through empathy (yes, even in B2B).
While these empathy marketing tips are helpful in themselves, they’re even better when they’re used together as part of a larger content strategy and a strong marketing practice based on four main principles: listen to understand, amplify the voices of others, speak the truth, and dialogue with intention.
Here are 14 ways your SaaS company can leverage empathy marketing to build trust.
Listen to understand
1. Talk (and listen) to real people
via Katelyn Bourgoin
It’s especially easy for SaaS teams to fall into the trap of imitating a hammer looking for a nail: “Which problem can we solve with our product?” But it’s impossible to offer a solution until you actually (read: deeply) understand the problem.
Active listening is a practice first developed in counseling and in dispute resolution, but it’s incredibly effective as an empathy marketing research tool as well. Instead of listening in order to fix a problem, the interviewer is simply listening to understand.
As Katelyn Bourgoin reinforces, active listening is important as it helps us overcome our inherent bias as the natural advocate for a product.
2. Ask questions
Sounds obvious, right? But too often actually sitting down and speaking to customers is the first marketing activity to go, especially when departments are overstretched. But there is a certain amount of understanding and empathy that can only come from asking the right questions—whether that’s in a survey, a useful poll, or in real conversations.
The adage in B2B marketing is that marketers should care not only about their customers but about their customers’ customers. It’s not only the immediate problem that’s important to your users. It’s also the entire context and the impact of that problem.
And guessing what that might be is not the same as knowing for sure.
“What do they want? Why do they want it? These questions need to get asked irrespective of what the brand sells. From there, the content decision comes through the lens of the brand's point of view. What can we—the brand—reliably offer in the way of what we know, what we believe, or what we do, that actually serves the unique needs or wants of the customer?
Not to be trite, but the best way to understand that is to ask.”
— Nick Richtsmeier, Principal and Founder at CultureCraft
3. Show empathy by echoing the answers you hear
As marketers, truly listening to customers’ problems also helps us articulate and understand the problem in the specific way that they experience it. Being able to restate the problem or parts of the situation in the customer’s own words is invaluable.
Here’s a great example from Xero, where the headline of the piece, “Adapt and Evolve,” came directly from their own users’ words to describe what they felt they must do to keep their business afloat during the pandemic:
This Voice of the Customer language allows the brand to resonate with others who are likely in the same position, finding empathy and understanding.
“Good content requires empathy for the people reading it. Listen to how they describe the solution, the pain they have, the benefits they get. Write down their exact words. Then use that language in your content. Good content that resonates is not about how you want to talk about the issues, but how your ideal customers actually talk about them. Your content should reflect the voice in their heads so they can say ‘Yes! This is for me.’ Don't guess. Speak their language!”
—Maria Ross, Founder and Chief Brand Strategist, Red Slice, and author of The Empathy Edge
4. Immerse yourself in buyer communities
Keyword research and interviewing can tell you some about what matters to users, including their intent when they reach your page. But SEO strategist and copywriter Jason Hewett recommends going deeper to truly learn more about your user’s values and problems.
One thing I always love to do to get a feel for how audience members engage and communicate is look up YouTube channels on the topic—something with good production quality and engagement usually provides a lot of insights as to what the audience's values are.
You learn a lot from how the influencers show off and what types of jokes they make. And these videos are usually more distinct from each other than blog content because there's not as much of a keyword focus. It's just someone talking about their passion.
In addition to YouTube, other social platforms offer opportunities to learn more about your B2B users. Facebook groups, Twitter threads, and LinkedIn post comments all offer great opportunities to learn more about what matters. So do internet communities like Growth Hackers and Indie Hackers (for B2B SaaS), as well as Slack groups, subreddits, and professional associations.
5. Develop (and actually use) marketing personas
Personas sometimes get a bad rap, especially when it’s common practice for companies to spend a ton of money and time on creating ideal customer profiles... only to never think of them again.
But the work of filling out a highly detailed ICP (complete with relevant goals, fears, day-to-day challenges, daily activities, objections, blockers, and more) really can only be completed well after a lot of user research and listening. In many ways, it’s like the deliverable of all of that research and investigatory work.
When you’re putting together your persona, avoid using adjectives, which are shortcuts around details and can sometimes make the fatal error of labeling personas (for example as “impatient” or “nitpicky”) instead of truly empathizing with their problems.
And make sure to refer back to your personas often—they’re a great reminder of why you create the content that you do, and who you’re creating it for.
Amplify the voices of others
6. Tell fictional stories that star your ideal users
Storytelling is powerful. Narratives bring order to the chaos and help us make sense of events by giving them patterns to follow. Stories give us the ability to inhabit other worlds, other minds, and other perspectives. Research has even shown that reading fiction has a direct impact on our ability to feel and display empathy.
In content marketing, creative storytelling gives us the opportunity to create an alternate reality that casts our audience as heroes. The story might demonstrate the challenges our heroes are up against, and then show how the alignment between brand and hero can help them defeat the monsters in their path to success.
Here’s a great example in a blog post from Trello:
In this example, the audience is clearly expected to align with the beloved “heroes” of Parks and Recreation. Rooting for these characters is equated to rooting for their own success and their own battles against bureaucracy and bad processes. The post asks, “what if the Parks and Rec folks had had Trello?”, which makes users wonder what might be possible if they had the same.
7. Tell real stories that star your customers (in their own words)
While fiction can be an effective way to create and promote empathy in marketing, there’s no substitute for social proof. Testimonials, case studies, and other “success story” formats like video interviews allow your actual customers to be the heroes, and invite your potential customers inside to see how they succeeded.
Bonus: allowing real customers to say nice things about your product means that they can get away with saying much nicer things than you would be wise to say about yourself. Case in point? This testimonial from a Slack user about the product’s “magic”:
8. Get personal with names and faces
Amplifying the voices of others isn’t just quoting them. Highlighting their names and faces as part of compelling storytelling can help your users connect more with them and their challenges—a focus on the whole person.
Despite what B2B implies, businesses don’t market to other businesses. Humans market to other humans, and testimonials and case studies are made more impactful when they actually feature the humans involved in the purchase decision—whether that’s through video and audio, like this story from a Norwegian Airlines employee for security company Sentinel One:
… or through the “face first” branding photos of Intercom’s success stories:
Done sparingly, highlighting your own team’s faces and names as well (through employee-generated content about what they like best about helping your users) can also be a great way to form authentic connections with your audience.
Take this example from project management tool ClickUp, where employees share their personal success stories (and those of their users) on a regular podcast:
Speak the truth
9. Talk to your users as real people
B2B content marketing also has a bad reputation for being stale, sterile, and boring. It often obfuscates the truth instead of getting right to the point. Too much B2B marketing content forgets that it’s speaking to flesh-and-blood humans who happen to be employees with work needs.
“The majority of content marketing fails because it is too distant from the actual customer,” says Richtsmeier. “It's written to please the CEO or the VP of Sales or some other internal stakeholder.” Speak in ways that resonate with your actual customers, not in dry corporate monotone that follows conventions put in place 30 years ago. As long as it’s based on a deep understanding of your audience, cutting the crap is probably one of the best ways to stand out.
Two ways to communicate directly with your primary users:
Use “you” and “your” in your copy, which makes sure you’re putting the focus where it belongs (on your customer and their needs) instead of on yourself or on third-person “market trends” or other business jargon
Loosen up. There are very few industries that are not made better by a more holistic, human approach to marketing. Use humor. Be clear. Empathy marketing means addressing the person behind the screen who has a life away from the computer the other 16 hours of the day — as showcased perfectly in this CTA from Rapid7.
10. Normalize human emotion
Anyone who says that B2B marketing shouldn’t tap into emotions because emotions have no place at work has not spent enough time in the office (or in Slack DMs). Just because emotions don’t always manifest in emotional reactions doesn’t mean they’re not key motivators in decision making.
Negative emotions surrounding decisions might range from frustration, boredom, and overwhelm to apprehensiveness and anxiety around losing respect. On the positive end, decision makers might feel trust in your product to solve its problem, relief that someone understands, and confidence that they’re making the right decision.
Rather than stoking fears (a move that’s manipulative and unethical; a poor way to use empathy in marketing), successfully empathy campaigns aim to name the emotions that users are feeling—and then reassure them.
Here’s a great example from Notion, which acknowledges common pain points that tech teams experience. It illustrates the frustration that comes from having too many tools to be productive (multiple sources of truth, poor communication, feeling lost and overwhelmed).
And restaurant industry startup Lunchbox takes a page from #2 above and puts its customers’ customers’ emotions at the forefront. Proving that Lunchbox understands the frustrations of restaurants and their patrons demonstrates a deep level of empathy—and a deep familiarity with the industry that helps build trust.
11. Practice extreme honesty
Much like self-deprecating humor is nearly always a win in social situations, zealous honesty in B2B marketing works. One reason is that it’s so darn rare, and it helps brands stand out.
One of the best ways this shows up is a section of a website that straight-up tells visitors when their product might not be the right fit. I love this example from Descript:
Why does this work?
It shows brand empathy by not wasting people’s time (the customer’s or the company’s). If a visitor isn’t the right fit for the product, this approach doesn’t try to force a relationship where there shouldn’t be one. It keeps churn to a minimum and saves both sides the hassle.
It drops the pretense. Having a bit of content like this is an open, willful acknowledgment that your product is not for everyone. It will not directly improve the CRO on your page, which is why many companies don’t do it. It gets very real, which is unexpected.
It puts the audience’s needs over the brand’s. This move is basically Empathy Marketing 101. It’s powerful because it’s genuine and refreshingly human—a tangible way of saying “your happiness is more important to us than your money. And here’s proof.”
It defines the brand and sets it apart. Being honest about who the product is NOT for is key because it allows the right people to feel confident they’re making the right decision. They can have trust that they’re not being sold on something that isn’t the right fit for them.
Dialogue with intention
12. Accept users’ perceptions as their reality
Empathy marketing is also a powerful tool for customer retention and continuing to engage users after conversion.
I had a company whose engineers would laugh at customer support requests or complaints about the platform. “Operator error LOL!” was the cadence ringing through our Slack channels. But this callousness was the opposite of good UX practices. Instead of acknowledging that the users were experiencing difficulty because something about the platform wasn’t clear or intuitive, the engineers rejected their perspectives.
It wasn’t good for business. It wasn’t good for anybody.
Empathy is fundamentally about decentering. We take ourselves out of the role of highest priority and give that priority to someone else. In this case, the client. Many people confuse empathy with "How would I feel if I were in their shoes"? That is actually a form of narcissism. The real question is, "How do they feel in their shoes?"
— Nick Richtsmeier, Principal and Founder at CultureCraft
Innovative businesses with empathy at the forefront can use negative feedback as a way to improve UX. But they can also use it to inspire product-led content that answers users’ questions and empowers them with new solutions.
This blog post from Slack gives helpful, actionable tips to make the most out of the Slack search feature.
Likely inspired by user questions and feedback (the Slack knowledgebase has no less than 90 articles that mention search), this post works in three ways:
It allows the company to show empathy by answering common questions or sources of frustration.
It improves people’s experience with the product.
It subtly highlights Slack as a solution to problems that other messaging platforms might have (not being able to find past conversations quickly).
This post is a prime example of a piece of content that doesn’t exist when companies don’t empathize with their users.
13. Guide readers to the right next step
Reciprocity—the give and take of meaningful relationships—is an important part of empathy. And poor reciprocity (read: uncomfortable asks) often happens in B2B marketing.
When the risk of the ask outweighs the benefit (e.g., “I don’t trust this company to not spam me if I enter my email address”), there’s no way that call-to-action converts. People only want to enter an email address or perform an action if the perceived benefit is greater than the natural tendency toward inertia.
Good CTAs show empathy because they’ve considered how their ask might be interpreted or considered.
A strong offer matches the reader’s level of awareness as demonstrated by keyword search intent. Someone searching for “what is blockchain?” does not want to invest $10K in bitcoin but might be interested in a free “Blockchain 101” course.
Here’s a real-life example from Cast.ai: a blog post with tips for keeping AWS Kubernetes costs in check (still fairly high-funnel with a “problem-aware” topic). The CTA isn’t trying to sell a solution to the problem—it’s too soon. Instead, it’s geared toward helping the audience understand their problem better by pointing to free cluster analysis.
Optimized CTAs are simply a natural next step in the conversation — are you staying in the conversational flow your audience needs, or are you interrupting that flow with your own objectives?
Empathetic marketing isn’t afraid to pause and slow down to embrace the natural timeline of conversation.
14. Give more than you take
The last tip here is an important one. Post-pandemic, showing empathy in marketing isn’t just understanding your user. It’s being generous of spirit and proving that you actually care. It’s putting your brand’s principles out in the open, where the rubber hits the road.
One of the changes we’re starting to see this year is a move away from gated content. In many cases, content gates don’t generate quality leads. Qualifying leads for a sales conversation based on an e-book download written for informational search intent doesn’t make sense.
So does best practice dictate that we forego creating high-level content? Of course not. But it’s time to drop the practice of making people sign up to get it. Instead, businesses can use valuable, top-quality content to educate their audience and build brand goodwill as experts in their industry—so that when the time does come for a client to look for a solution, the brand isn’t a stranger to them.
Cognism CMO Alice de Courcy recently posted on LinkedIn with the results from her company’s change in mindset:
Cognism’s more open, empathy-driven approach to content gating resulted in a 350% increase in conversion to meeting— a sign to all of us of the sea change happening in B2B SaaS content marketing.
As a content strategy consultant, I help B2B SaaS businesses leverage empathy to empower customers and drive revenue. I’d love to connect with you on LinkedIn!
