How to Build Stronger Relationships With Potential Customers Through Empathy Stories

In order to make it obvious your company is the best potential option for your ideal clients, you have to show them you understand their unique situation.

People start to listen when they know that you understand where they are:

It’s certainly not easy to meet your ideal customer or clients where they are on their journey. To do so, it requires a helluva lot of legwork - namely in having conversations with the people in that group so you aren’t making assumptions about who they are.

But when you make a commitment to having those conversations consistently, you’ll not only learn more about where these folks are, but also what it means about the way they’re living their lives, the problems they’re having, what’s keeping them up at night, and how you can help.

Then you can begin to tell stories about your product or service that are rooted in empathy, and show these people that you’re ready to work with them on the path toward a solution.

Ensure Your Content Has An ‘Empathetic Foundation’

It’s cliche, maybe, but people only care about you if they know you care. Some of the best marketing campaigns you’ll find - and the content that makes up the backbone of these campaigns - focuses on a mutual understanding of what’s standing in the way of your potential customer having a better life.

When you consistently share this story you build two things with this group of people: 1. A shared ‘enemy’ 2. A common goal

As a startup founder, for example, it’s likely that you started your company due to seeing a hole or gap in your chosen niche which you could exploit, but also due to some degree to personal experience.

Something happened in your life which helped you develop a deep interest in the problem that you’re looking to solve, or you experienced something that led to a ‘light bulb’ moment. When that thing happened you knew building a company to solve the problem wasn’t just interesting to you, it was a non-negotiable.

When you have conversations with your ideal clients and develop a deep understanding of that ‘non-negotiable’ in their lives, and what you can do to join the fight against your ‘shared enemy’ you start to build an emotional bond.

And let’s face it, people buy through emotion and to shift emotions.

Target the ‘Shared Enemy’ and Lead Your Customers Into Battle

When you’ve established a baseline of empathy with your customer’s unique situation, next you should:

• Target the ‘shared enemy’
• Lead your customers into battle

Targeting the Shared Enemy

Your ideal customer’s enemy is the source of their pain or frustration. For the sake of example, let’s say you have a pet travel company. You help your customers get their pets from Point A to Point B though chartered flights or other transportation which protects their pets and gives them peace of mind on long trips.

You built this company because you were always traveling, and the few times you put your precious pups in a cargo hold in crates, you were about to pull your hair out.

The shared enemy here with your customers is that scary, uncertain experience your pets can encounter. There’s a ton of emotion to play on here, right?

So your responsibility, from a marketing perspective, is to lead your customers into battle to vanquish that enemy.

How do you do that?

By painting a picture of what this path to a better life looks like in everything that you create and you promote to draw them closer.

Lead Your Customers Into Battle

The shared enemy you’re fighting with your customers in this scenario is fear, discomfort and anxiety.

All of your marketing efforts, therefore, should lean on how you help your customers to vanquish each of these through a more secure, more predictable, even a luxury travel experience for their pets.

Each piece of content should use language that paints a picture of the polar opposite of the shared enemy that you’re fighting. The opposite of fear being calm, the opposite of discomfort being comfort, the opposite of anxiety being certainty, and so on.

When you can meet your customers where they are - sitting with their frustrations - show them that you understand and deeply empathize, and then show them a path to the other side where the enemy no longer exists, you move from becoming ‘an’ option to the option.

--?? Hi y'all, I'm Kris.

The founder of Zanate Ventures based in Austin, Texas.

We help growth stage companies unlock their core stories to win more business.

To learn how we work, check out the links I share in the comments of these posts and the Featured Section of my profile.