The Human Relationship Secret to Marketing Success

by Scott Howard | Jan 31, 2018 | Marketing and Advertising Insights, The Not-So-Secret Writings of ScLoHo, Uncategorized

Over the years, I’ve mentioned that you need to use Human Relationship Principles in your marketing and today, I’m going to take the time to lay it all out for you with The Human Relationship Secret to Marketing Success.

First, let’s talk about the problem with a history lesson.

The problem is it can be challenging to be successful in business because you need to sell stuff at a profit and you need customers who will buy from you at the right price to make it all balance out.

There are thousands of companies that start out with excellent ideas and an almost perfect business plan but they lack customers and end up failing.

Advertising and marketing can be confusing and I’ve seen many people try various ideas to get customers and yet often they are missing the Human Relationship factor.

Let’s dig into history for a couple of seconds.

Before commercial television and radio, and yes, way before the internet, print advertising was the method most businesses advertised.  Posters, signs, newspaper and magazine ads were the beginning of the modern advertising age a couple centuries ago.

But even before paid advertising, there was another way our ancestors found out about stuff to buy (or trade) and that was simple human interactions that didn’t require even written communication.

Word Of Mouth is the term we use for this.  It’s simply conversation between people.  Friends telling friends about something they’ve done or discovered.  This form of communication is based on trust and uses the human relationship factor that is rooted in our souls.

Over time as advertising campaigns were developed and mass media evolved, the best ad campaigns used this human relationship principle.  Advertisements used movie and tv stars as spokespersons and early commercial radio stations did the same.   This practice of celebrity spokespersons continues today.  Just last week, I was watching Jeopardy with Alex Trebek when one of the commercials featured Alex selling life insurance. And on Superbowl Sunday, there will be a few celebrities making appearances in some of the ads including Cindy Crawford and Morgan Freeman (for us Baby Boomers).

But despite the popularity of celebrity endorsements in advertising, that type of ad is not as powerful as the recommendation from a friend. 

Facebook is looking to capitalize on this, when they added the Recommendation option to the posts you create, but like I said this is nothing new.  The challenge is how do you implement Human Relationship Principles in your marketing?

Probably the best advice I can give you is what NOT to do.

Think about the way you talk with friends.

Do you scream at them like we sometimes see in obnoxious car dealer TV ads? No, that’s not good.

Do you talk real fast and give someone the phone number of website address multiple times when they ask you for a recommendation?  Probably not.

Here’s one that is bound to create some backlash from my friends in the advertising business… Do you have music playing in the background to enhance your answer to your friend?  Most radio and TV ads do.

Now I admit that I use some of these, like music on occasion in radio ads to create a feel or evoke an emotional connection.  Giving a website address is also common, but it is becoming rare because I can simply ask Siri or Alexa or Google to connect me with the name of the business and that usually works these days.

There’s another Human Relationship Secret to Marketing Success you need to know about that I’ve only touched on and that is Trust.

How do you become trusted?  One element is by becoming familiar to your customer.  In the ad business we call this Frequency, as in how often your advertising message is heard by the person you want to reach.

I’ll revert back to the human relationship principle to dig deeper on this.

Dating and marriage.  Often I will ask someone how long they dated their spouse before they married.  I have never had anyone tell me that they married their partner on the first date.  Why?  Because it takes frequency or multiple dates in build familiarity and trust.

You’re not going to commit to marry someone you don’t trust.

And you are not likely to buy a product or service from someone or a business that you don’t trust.  At the very minimum, you need to have a level of trust that what you are spending your money on will provide you with the value that is at least equal to the money you spent right?

You may have noticed that I really didn’t focus on which advertising medium is the best or what new social platform will make you widely successful.  Because those are just tactics that will continue to change as time marches on.  For real lasting success, you need to start with the right foundation and that is the Human Relationship Principles and Factors that are both universal and timeless.