6 mins read
How B2B brands can build trust through emotional intelligence
sales & marketing
Rebecca Fell
Senior Marketing Manager
Rebecca is the Senior Marketing Manager at Rawnet. Her journey in digital marketing spans over a decade, marked by successful client campaigns for Adobe, Vodafone, Bottomline and Softcat. Since joining Rawnet in 2020 as an Acquisition Specialist, Rebecca has evolved within the organisation to head up strategic marketing initiatives that elevate Rawnet's presence in the digital landscape. Rebecca leverages her extensive experience in digital marketing to not only lead Rawnet's marketing efforts but also to showcase the agency's expertise.
Simply put it means those people can effectively understand and manage their emotions whilst being empathetic to others. Obviously this is important in our day to day socialisation, but how does it directly impact brand trust, especially when 64% of the world don’t seem to possess it?
Emotional intelligence in B2B
Being emotionally intelligent in the world of B2B almost sounds wrong. Our objectives and KPIs mean we strive to fulfil other business’s pain points and needs with our solution or service - surely doesn’t sound emotional!
However, this isn’t the case. Being emotionally intelligent means tuning it to how your current and potential customers are feeling and behaving, then reevaluating your positioning to align with those wants and needs. This means connecting with your audience on a much deeper level and building a relationship with them over time. Through that relationship, their trust will evolve and strengthen.
Microsoft embodied emotional intelligence in their Remix campaign, where they looked to expand their B2B marketing approach by adopting a B2C strategy to appeal to a new audience base. Through social media, Microsoft used empathy mapping to engage with their audience on the subject of hybrid working. As you can imagine, the content was emotionally charged, discussing the highs and lows of hybrid working and empowering users to find a harmonious work-life balance. Not only did the results show a 28% increase in engagement year-on-year, but they also demonstrated how a more emotionally intelligent strategy can engage audiences online and help build trust.
The four pillars of brand emotional intelligence
Kristin Harper, CEO of Driven to Succeed and author of The Heart of a Leader, developed Daniel Goleman’s original four pillars of emotion to generate a brand-specific blueprint:
1. Brand consciousness
- “Defining the brand identity including its attributes, values, heritage, tone of voice, and personality in a way that resonates with your target audience and distinguishes itself from key competitors.” - Kristin Harper
Presenting your brand as a serious, matter-of-fact powerhouse might appeal to those in senior management positions but may not ignite any emotional response from an untapped audience. On the contrary, those who appear fun-loving and witty might be great for some, but might not be perceived as serious enough to impress large enterprises.
2. Brand management
“Providing relevant, predictable brand assets and experiences that delight the target audience, address their unmet needs, and build loyalty.” - Kristin Harper
Understanding your audience is one thing, but personas and audience research can quickly become outdated. Creating assets and experiences that remain constantly engaging is another feat altogether, so gather a good CRO and strategy team to ensure your research remains up to date and help you make any necessary adjustments.
Understanding your audience is one thing, but personas and audience research can quickly become outdated. Creating assets and experiences that remain constantly engaging is another feat altogether, so gather a good CRO and strategy team to ensure your research remains up to date and help you make any necessary adjustments.
3. Customer intimacy
“Taking a genuine interest in the challenges, concerns, feelings, perspectives, and unmet needs of its customers and stakeholders to build an emotional connection.” - Kristin Harper
In my opinion, this is where a lot of brands fall down. Yes, we understand their needs if they need to increase ROI or drive more sales, but what emotions are driving that need? What is it about your product or service that makes them happy or those areas that they’re feeling really frustrated over? This is gold information for not only understanding how to tweak your current offering, but expanding and generating new ones that might appeal to a bigger audience.
In my opinion, this is where a lot of brands fall down. Yes, we understand their needs if they need to increase ROI or drive more sales, but what emotions are driving that need? What is it about your product or service that makes them happy or those areas that they’re feeling really frustrated over? This is gold information for not only understanding how to tweak your current offering, but expanding and generating new ones that might appeal to a bigger audience.
4. Customer engagement
“Activating marketing campaigns while engaging in thoughtful, intentional, two-way dialogues with customers.” - Kristin Harper
There are countless tone-deaf ad examples out there that should never have seen the light of day, but they generally involve self-promotional brand messaging. Conversational and emotive language is going to strike more of a tone with your audience and humanise you. As the word becomes more automated, this will help you stand out even more!
There are countless tone-deaf ad examples out there that should never have seen the light of day, but they generally involve self-promotional brand messaging. Conversational and emotive language is going to strike more of a tone with your audience and humanise you. As the word becomes more automated, this will help you stand out even more!
Practical strategies for developing emotional intelligence
For brands to become more emotionally intelligent, there’s a balance between internal and external influence. By ensuring your people are more emotionally intelligent, they will in turn reflect that into their work, but you will also need to actively show that in your branding and messaging.
So let’s look at some strategies you can take away along with some measurement metrics to ensure you’re on the right track:
1. Supplement your existing customer data
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Analysing your current customers emotions and behaviours won’t just help you understand your audience better, but you’ll also be able to start quickly building up trust with a new audience:
- Hold meetings or tune in to conversations with your current customers to understand their emotions and behaviours around your products or brand.
- Review your findings and look for common themes that you could harness.
- Update content, positioning or even your brand identity to humanise your brand more.
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Measure the effectiveness of your changes through click and engagement rates. Sentiment analysis would be great to use to also measure how your clients felt before and after your shift in strategy. Net Promoter Scores (NPS) would also help gather this information.
2. Humanise your digital touchpoints
- How current and future clients engage with you speaks volumes on how your brand is interpreted. Reevaluate your portals and tools to ensure users are getting the best experience, which also impacts how trustworthy you’re perceived:
- Use CRO tools like Mouseflow to evaluate any friction or stress points and then fix them!
- Update your chatbot messaging to include more emotive language.
- Showcase your staff and culture through social media and provide your audience a glimpse into your REAL brand.
- Measure the effectiveness of your changes through session time, engagement rates and social media engagement.
3. Internal emotional intelligence training
- Fostering a culture of emotionally intelligent employees works on two levels: not only will this training start positively affecting their output, but you can actively demonstrate how you’re nurturing and tuning into customers' needs across your marketing platforms. This will bolster your trustworthiness through internal and external means:
- Hold regular individual feedback sessions where you can take on board the emotions that your staff are feeling.
- Emotional intelligence training sessions where people can learn and understand what it means to be emotionally intelligent.
- Group discussion sessions are just as valuable as others might feel more inclined to discuss if others have experienced something similar.
- Measure the effectiveness of this strategy through employee surveys or through client feedback on how account management demonstrates their behaviour and mindfulness.
Conclusion
The world of B2B has always been seen by many as very factual and formal. Showing a more human element to who you are and what you stand for isn’t just for B2C - by definition all brands should be B2C? Harness the data you have and pivot your messaging to be more emotionally intelligent so you can build that trust with your current (or even new) audience.
Let’s get started on your digital transformation
If you’re ready to accelerate your digital journey and harness the power of emotional intelligence, Rawnet is here to guide you every step of the way. Our goal is to build trust through emotionally intelligent strategies that resonate with your audience and strengthen your brand relationships.
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