Lessons on injecting personality and empathy
We recently sat down with Michelle Hurford, a marketing manager in professional services, on the marketingSHOWCASE podcast in Leeds to discuss a topic many B2B marketers are ‘feeling right now but not saying out loud’: the dehumanisation of B2B marketing.
Michelle’s core argument: B2B buyers are human, yet our content treats them like automatons. If your marketing isn’t sparking an emotional connection, youre missing the most critical element of the sale.
Here are the key takeaways from our discussion on how to humanise your B2B strategy, bridge the technical gap, and leverage personality to sell.
The root cause of robotic B2B: Fear vs. Automation.
Why are B2B campaigns so often sterile and impersonal? The root cause is a fear of injecting personality, driven by an over-reliance on data and automation.
Many marketers mistakenly believe that professional services or technical products require professional, therefore sterile, language. But the robotic tendency manifests in campaigns that lack a distinct voice, are obsessed with features over benefits, and fail to tell a human story. This immediate, negative impact on the business is simple: you become indistinguishable from your competition.
Humanising the technical: bridging the gap.
Michelle works in professional services, where the subject matter—like audit, tax, and corporate finance – can feel inherently technical and transactional. The challenge is bridging the complexity of the work with the necessary emotional connection of a human-centric approach.
In complex B2B, the bridge is built through clarity, relatability, and personality. Humour, when used appropriately, is one of the most powerful tools for this. It serves as a necessary emotional connector, as it:
- Breaks the ice: Humour makes intimidating or dry topics instantly accessible.
- Shows confidence: A brand comfortable enough to use wit shows it is confident in its expertise.
- Creates memory: We remember things that make us feel something, whether its a sense of relief from complexity or a chuckle.
By injecting genuine personality – whether thats through a witty campaign or a genuinely empathetic case study – you shift the focus from a purely transactional pitch to a human relationship.
The Non-negotiable step for genuine empathy
For any marketer trying to humanise their brand in a complex B2B industry, there is one non-negotiable step: Introduce genuine personality by telling authentic stories.
This means focusing your content strategy not on your company’s capabilities, but on the real, emotional pain points and successes of your clients. What was the journey before they hired you? What was the moment of relief? That emotional truth is the foundation of B2C-style connection, and it is equally vital in B2B.The Impersonal Tactic to Ditch Immediately.
If a B2B marketing team decides today to stop treating their buyers like robots, the single most outdated and impersonal tactic they should ditch immediately is the cold, generic, mass-blast email.
The tactic is not the email itself, but the impersonal approach. Michelle suggests moving away from any content that screams ‘sent to a list of 10,000’ and toward genuine, segment-specific insights that demonstrate deep understanding of the buyer’s individual situation.
What is Michelle’s favourite example of a B2B brand that successfully puts the ‘human’ first? Tune in to the full marketingSHOWCASE podcast episode to hear her answer and the key lesson you can take from their strategy!
The marketingSHOWCASE blog features ongoing insights and case studies to provide value to the marketing community. You can find more actionable takeaways, including ‘5 in Twenty’ sessions, by visiting theHUB here.