Have you ever wondered why the PR campaigns of many businesses fall flat or have limited success? A key factor is the lack of emotion and a failure to humanize the brand. Instead of tugging on your heartstrings and stirring some deep emotional connections, the PR content instead feels bland, uninteresting, and has no resonance.
In this article, I aim to help you avoid that and give you the tools to humanize your brand so your PR strategies can shine.
Why Humanizing Your Brand Works
Businesses often make the mistake of seeing their customers as just figures and stats. But this isn’t the case. Customers are humans. They have emotions and thoughts, and these things affect their browsing and shopping habits.
If you tap into the human and emotional aspects of your customers, you can first build a bond of trust and a greater understanding. After that, then comes the sales spiel and the PR and marketing to get your conversions.
Simply put, by humanizing your brand, you make your business more relatable, more trustworthy, and more appealing. I am far more likely to connect with a business that I feel is run by real, down-to-earth and likeable people, as opposed to a faceless corporation.
8 Tips to Humanize Your PR Message
The main aim of humanizing brands is to break the wall between your business and the customer. You want to let your customers see the personal elements of your business and give them a face or piece of content they can relate to. A creative digital PR agency can help with this, and I have created 8 tips below that will also help humanize your brand.
1. Make sure that your entire team understands the need for humanization
Humanization needs to be an organisation-wide approach and everyone needs to be on board with it. It’s no good if your PR team starts creating humanized content only for your marketing team to continue creating bland and strike content!
Humanizing the brand should be a process all teams need to be aware of so it could be a great idea to have a meeting or a brainstorming session at the start of your PR campaign where everyone can contribute and get invested in the idea.
2. Understand your audience's language and emulate it
A simple way to humanize your brand is to use the same type of language as your audience. This requires a little studying and understanding of cultures, regional variances, and dialects, but it works wonders!
If you sound like your customers, they are more likely to resonate with what you are saying. Basically, match your tone and language with your customer.
3. Write content with personalization
Oftentimes PR content is written in an impersonal manner using a third-person tense or strictly formal language. This is BORING and it’s also a surefire way to switch customers off. Of course, professionalism is needed but add personalization to your content. Use first-person language, address the reader using “you” – make your PR content read like an actual conversation.
4. Add stories and use real-life examples
The best PR campaigns weave stories and characters into the content. These could be real-life examples of customers who have had positive experiences with your business. A personal element like this is something that the public can relate to and it helps build trust.
5. Don’t be afraid to add humour to your content
Why did the chicken cross the road? Ok, ok, bad example! But, the point stands – don’t be afraid to add humour to your PR content! People can relate to humour and it makes the content much more interesting, engaging, and refreshing. Just don’t overdo it – there is always a time and place for humour.
6. Don’t make the focus solely on pushing for sales
PR messages often fall short because they put the immediate focus on the end goal. This is a surefire way to put people off. Instead, your PR messages should focus primarily on the customer with a secondary goal of pushing for sales for example. Always put them first and this helps humanise your brand.
7. Engage with your audience
If I get a response from a business on social media or a comment from a Youtuber it immediately reinforces my positive image of that person or company. I know that there is actually someone there who is taking note and listening to what we are saying! To that end, make sure you engage with your audience and reply to their comments wherever possible.
8. Show your employee's personalities and interests
I know that I am far more likely to engage with a business if I can see their staff and know that they are normal people just like me. It gives reassurance and makes them more approachable. A simple way to do this is to include media that shows the personalities and interests of your team.
This could be via something like a staff page on your website, or social media content and blogs that focus on out-of-work activities.
Humanizing Brands Helps Build a Strong PR Message
Don’t let your company be a faceless, monotonous entity that customers can’t relate to! Instead, start humanizing the brand and bring a level of emotion and personalization to your business. With this PR approach, customers will be able to relate to your company, digest your PR messages easier, and ultimately build a bond of trust and a positive relationship.
