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This week we will be discussing one of the best ways that you can use for online marketing - humanising your brand.
This can be applied to your organic content as well as paid ads and campaigns.
Definition of humanising a brand
From the name itself, it seems pretty easy to understand. It means giving your brand a persona, a human element that can be felt and resonated with. It is easier said than done, and this is something many creators and brands have been doing for years, regardless if we realise or not.
Why is humanising your brand important online?
One of the biggest reasons is because people want authenticity. It is what we as normal human beings resonate with the most.
Socialising is part of our nature. In the real world, we do that by talking to one another, laughing, crying, showing empathy, etc. but in the digital world, we interact via computer systems by liking, commenting, sharing and saving content we relate to or find valuable to us, and we interact with content and follow who we follow because we have psychological and emotional needs and wants that have to be fulfilled.
We want to be understood, not to be sold to. When we are understood, we trust the person, or in this case, the brand.
The result of humanising your brand is also creating a more meaningful connection with your customers.
Your customers will buy from you because they support what you stand for, your incredible team, your voice, your persona, your values, etc.
Not to mention, this gradually builds trust between your audience and your brand. People are more likely to trust other people than faceless corporate entities. Therefore if your social media page screams ‘faceless corporate entity’ you will be seen as out of touch to your audience, hindering your posts from performing well.
For example, if all Apple did in their ads was to tell you how great their new M3 chip is, a normal person would not care too much about it.
“Oh, an expensive laptop that costs RM10,000. It’s powerful for sure, but I don’t need it.”
That’s why in Apple’s ads, they focus on the type of person that would use their product and want to target, featuring people that do intensive creative work and showing how cool it feels like to have a powerful laptop to do demanding tasks efficiently. They are not scamming you. They are just really good at filling emotional and psychological gaps in the market.
So this brings me to my next point. If you humanise your brand well online, you are overall providing a better customer experience. Remember that your customers are visiting your profile, not a physical store, which means a lack of human interaction and physical experience.
As more and more businesses arise, understanding these concepts gives you a competitive edge to the rest and lucky for you, here are some effective tactics you can implement.
First, three key steps.
Step 1: Write down who you are trying to reach out
Be specific. Very specific. We’re not talking about just their age range, gender, and interests.
We want to challenge you to go even deeper than that. What are their common traits? Where do they usually hang out? What kind of clothes do they wear? Do they travel a lot or do they stay at home more often? What is their level of education? In fact, we want you to write down at least ten questions, similar to the ones above, and answer them as detailed as you can. Come up with more if you need to.
This will help bring clarity to who you are trying to target online and whose problem you are trying to solve.
Whether we like it or not, the answer is no, we cannot target everyone. Trying to reach out to everyone is counterintuitive and you will reach out to no one.
Step 2: Think of the problems that your audience faces and how you can help them overcome those problems
Let’s say for example your target audience is fresh university students in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who just graduated from high school, and want to learn how to live on their own in their dorm in a cost effective, healthy, and productive way.
The next thing you should do is write down the problems this market faces. Examples:
They are spending way too much on food eating out.
They know cooking is more cost effective, but they don’t like cooking.
They don’t have time to do chores like cleaning.
They hate cleaning.
They struggle with motivation to study.
Etc.
This again, gives you, as a creator or brand, clarity on what to create and what not to create, because the last thing we want is to put in the effort to create content that our target audience has zero interest in.
Level 3: Communicate in a way that your audience understands
This is more than just speaking the same language. I’ll give you a good example.
If you are a medical professional who wants to build your online brand and following, are you trying to communicate with people who have the same level of knowledge and experience as you or normal people who have little to no medical knowledge?
If you choose the latter, then speaking in fancy medical jargon would not be a wise choice because they would not understand, and they would not care. They just want to know what types of food they should avoid to prevent stomach bloating. 10 actionale methods to humanise your brand Method 1 : Storytelling
Lulumelon is a well-known global sportswear brand founded in Canada. Their target audience is not just people who do sports. It’s people who want to feel empowered. Notice how they target an emotion rather than the action itself.
Take a look at this video from a recent campaign they ran (no pun intended) called #lulumelonFURTHER.
It’s about a minute long. The caption only consisted of 5 words: “They were made for this.”, and the word ‘Lulumelon’ did not appear even once in the entire video script.
Instead, they got a team to write an incredible story behind powerful women.
“We’re not running to prove anyone wrong. We’re running because we were made for this.”
The video was incredibly well-received, garnering 21K likes and nearly 500 comments on Instagram - one of their most popular videos to date.
They achieved that by focusing on a well written story, featuring real people, presenting the story in an authentic way, and their followers related to that.
Method 2: Appear in your videos
I think most people would think this point only applies to content creators or influencers, but you do not have to be an “influencer” to appear in your videos.
People engage with people, not brands.
So, having a real human represent the brand, whether it is yourself or someone else, can spark interaction in your content. This means anyone in your team who is comfortable to appear on camera can be a great candidate.
This also builds trust especially in niches where authority is king. People are more likely to trust a real person than a business.
Just take a look at how Malaysian sambal selling sensation, Khairul Aming (support local!!), markets his products online through his content just by appearing in his videos.
Having a good on camera personality helps a lot here, but if you're struggling to do so, know that taking the first step and uploading your first video is the hardest but the most crucial thing to do.
It's also worth noting that Khairul Aming also won the Creator Of The Year in the TikTok category of the People's Choice Award in 2023. At that time, he had 3.7 million followers but he has since grown to more than 4.9 million followers as of writing this blog.
Method 3: Take your viewers behind the scenes
Hygr started off as Malaysian (support local!!) lip balm brand, founded by ex law students Ivor & Meng.
Many of their short form video content on Instagram and TikTok revolve around bringing us behind the scenes of running HYGR, showing the ups and downs of running and building a business in Malaysia.
Not a lot of businesses do this and I'm sure that this might not be suitable for every single business, but the truth is, it works. Bringing your viewers along through your journey, again, demonstrates your brand’s authenticity, and fosters trust.
Method 4: Be unconventional and bold
You can still sell through your content without making your content “salesy”, and Scrub Daddy, aka America’s favourite sponge, in our opinion, does that flawlessly.
Scrub Daddy’s marketing team was able to take something commonly deemed as boring, a sponge, and give it personality in their TikToks.
We have to admit, the smiley design of the sponge does give a leverage, but from their content, you can tell that they are not afraid to take risks and be unconventional.
Their tactic is a mix of using trending audio, incorporating Internet trends, memes and GENZ slang, but they make the product the star. It’s clear that they want to sell to you, but they deliver that message in ways that appeal to a younger audience, a TikTok centric audience, and they stood out because no other sponge company dared to be unconventional like Scrub Daddy.
Method 5: Humour
Morning Brew is a news publishing company, just like Forbes and New York Times and they believe in getting subscribers for a low cost, but their TikTok content very rarely ever mentions what services they offer and were not salesy at all.
They were able to understand one very important concept (grab a pen and paper to write this down) - TikTok is a platform where most people come to be entertained.
The Morning Brew marketing team creates TikToks centering around funny skits that office people and Internet savvy people can relate to. They do not use any fancy editing, in fact all of these accounts here don’t so that’s another point to discuss in the future.
One of their most popular videos shows Dan asking employees in the office if they want to take the bonus or double it and give it to a coworker, resulting in everyone wanting to double it, and we see Dan slowly lose his sanity as the amount went up to over a million dollars. It’s a smart way to hop on a social media trend (double it or give it to the next person) in an organic way that relates to your brand and target audience.
That 1 minute video has 21 million views, 2.2 million likes, 6 thousand comments, 97 thousand saves and 22.8 thousand shares as of April 2024.
How would you incorporate humour into your content to humanise your brand?
Method 6: Mascot
If your brand has a character that is well known by many, create an animated or live action mascot of it and let it be the face of your content, and a brand that executes this really well is Duolingo.
Almost everyone knows the green owl character in the Duolingo app. The Duolingo team hopped onto this opportunity and turned the owl into a real life mascot who is the main face of their content.
This content tactic gave Duolingo a recognisable and memorable personality online. They are seen as a brand that is fun and entertaining rather than a serious corporate entity, and their audience on TikTok appreciates that. Similarly to Scrub Daddy, Duolingo is not cautious when it comes to their content like most businesses, and that made them stand out quickly.
Method 7: User generated content
UGC (User generated content) is simply content your brand posts that is created by users.
The benefit of UGC marketing is providing social proof and building consumer confidence to your online audience. This is because we get to see the products or services being used by real human beings and as we stated before, humans trust humans rather than brands.
Despite what you see online, UGC content does not only work well for cosmetics or personal care brands. Take the jewellery brand IzandCo for example.
They are an example of a brand that integrates UGC content well on Instagram by posting photos of real customers proposing to their significant other using their wedding rings or wearing the rings on their wedding day.
These photos are not shot in studios with professional lighting and sets. They are meant to look like photos that anyone could have taken, and these posts usually perform better because more people can relate to them.
Method 8 : Live Streams
Live streaming is a great way to stay on top of your audience’s mind. Some brands do it occasionally or only for special events and some do it regularly with a fixed schedule.
Regardless of what works for you, going live means you can take audience engagement to the next level because you are interacting with them in real time. With high-speed internet being more accessible and technology getting more advanced as years go by, getting in the habit of live streaming can future-proof your brand.
“The global live streaming market in 2023 is estimated to be worth $1.49 billion, a compound growth rate of 20.6% compared to 2022. The market is expected to grow to $3.21 billion in 2027.” This line above was taken from a LinkedIn post written by copywriter, Mary Wamuyu, and we highly encourage you to read it.
Gordon Ramsay and HexClad do live streams on Gordon’s YouTube channel to show how he uses the cookware from his HexClad line to make delicious recipes. One of them linked here got nearly 1 million views, more than 600 comments and over 30k likes.
How would you use live streaming for your brand's content?
Method 9: Go to the streets
If live streams are not your thing, why not consider going out to the streets to interact with people in real life?
This can be a great way to show the friendlier and outgoing side of your brand, of course, depending on your niche.
Canadian pop music duo, Crash Adams, does a ton of content out in the streets to organically market their music. One of their current popular series is asking people to freestyle in their latest songs.
They will play their songs live outdoors and get strangers to freestyle out in the open, performing alongside with them. It works because we not only get exposed to their songs, which is genius marketing, but we also get to hear other talented people freestyle rap or sing which is fun. This video above got nearly 600k likes, over 2000 comments, 48k saves and almost 5 million views on TikTok!
You can also consider doing street interviews or mini games that you can play with the public.
Method 10: Comment on your videos
Replying to comments on your content not only adds a layer of human touch to your brand, it is also a great way to show that you care about your audience. Just flip the situation around and think from your followers’ perspective.
How would you feel if you left a comment on a post you liked and got a reply?
You will feel appreciated.
If you want to take this a step further, comment on other accounts in your niche. Do this long enough and you will start to build connections with other brands or creators, but also followers from other accounts too. This will also help to improve the reachability of your account to new people.
With all that being said, the comments you leave need to be authentic and genuine, otherwise it can be considered as spam and we definitely do not want that. This can be a topic for another day.
In a nutshell:
Humansing your brand online sounds simple, but execution is key here. Like all things. It takes time and effort to build something truly outstanding.
The Creative Pistachio was founded with a mission to help people like you share your ideas online by creating valuable content for your audience. We are constantly finding ways to help you get creating.
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