Many people do not trust faceless corporations.
When consumers buy from companies or organizations, they usually do it with people they sincerely trust. If someone doesn’t trust you or your company, they most likely will never do business with you. Trust is extremely important, if not the most crucial aspect of the business world. People, undoubtedly, want to not only trust you, but they want to relate to you and experience an emotional connection during your interaction with them.
Undoubtedly having a faceless corporation can ruin your company’s image. People won’t feel connected, and worse, they will traditionally think it’s just another cold corporate environment with one monotone branded voice being utilized across all channels.
Many businesses feel frozen with social business as it relates to their culture problem. It's critical that over time your audience connects with the real people in your business, with a natural starting point being social networks. There, an organization's CEO can willingly share his unique experiences and constructively engage with his or her community.
As a result of consistent social media communication, the direct relationship between longtime customers and specific brands can become deep and personal to the point where customers not only feel like they are part of the incorporated community, but they consider themselves part of the family. This organically moves into them becoming passionate advocates for the brand. When corporations humanize their brand, it puts a spark in the connection. When people buy things, they buy things from an emotionally connected point of view. Therefore, it is critical to start marketing as a real person instead of solely from a robotic sales standpoint.
There is precisely no better way for people to feel valued and connected than through the CEO. The CEO typically becomes the familiar face and familiar voice of the corporation. The direct relationship the CEO naturally has with the community is important when humanizing a brand. It is important, though, that the CEO be transparent when sharing stories, which means sharing both victories and, to a lesser degree, fails with plans on how to improve going forward. The CEO adequately reflects the corporation's values and generously lends considerable credit to everyone else on the team. When CEOs become the familiar faces of their corporations, they boost the credibility and exposure of their organizations.
Another important aspect of humanizing one's brand is investing in people. This goes both for one's consumers and employees. If you have people in your organization that doesn't understand social media and how becoming a social business relates to them and their job, then educate them on such. Taking time to invest in educating your top executives down to the lowest level employee you have will profit the company as a whole.
Another way to humanize one's brand is to include real employees on the official website, sales materials, and social media discussions as this typically help to add faces to a unique brand and traditionally makes your organization more relatable. People want to see “behind the curtain.” They want to recognize who they are doing business with beyond the brand name. By leveraging both essential employees and customers' voices on social media, brands can include real and relatable faces to their corporate image.
Technology will only continue to advance. It's not disappearing, and nothing can re-create humans interacting with humans. Brands that comprehend this and employ it to their advantage will ultimately succeed in their marketing efforts.