Empathetic Marketing: Connecting with Customers Beyond the Sale

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Steven Zakash** (0:17)
Hello and welcome back to the show. Today, we are talking about empathetic marketing, connecting with customers beyond the sale. I'm Steven Zakash here with Tullio Siragusa and Mike Lusky. Hey, guys.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:32)
Let's do this.

**Mike Lusky** (0:33)
Hey, Steven.

**Steven Zakash** (0:34)
Let's do it. So when you market with empathy, you're not just selling, you're serving. Remember the last time you saw an ad that felt like it was shouting at you or something like, I swear there's an Amazon ad right now that is driving me nuts, that is just pretty much shouting at me. But compare that to a moment when you have a brand that really genuinely kind of understands your struggle, like they're speaking directly to what you were going through. So empathetic marketing is about understanding the human behind the consumer. It's not just about what consumers buy, but why they buy it, what they feel, and how we can meet their deeper needs. It's about trust and relationships rather than transactions. Mike, let's set the stage here. Why does empathy matter so much in today's marketing?

**Mike Lusky** (1:26)
Yeah, Stephen, I think that was really well said. And I guess if I had to start off maybe first with defining empathy, so that we have a shared understanding, is I would say that empathy, the way that I think about it is your pain or the customer struggles, but in my heart or in the heart of the brand. And so we think about it that way, I think that's what customers are really looking for today, right? Perhaps one of the benefits of having all this data and having all this information available to us is that the customer is a lot smarter, right? They can get to information a lot quicker. But on top of that, with them being really well informed, is I think that they're looking to or they're trying to gravitate towards brands that get them, right? Because before, it used to take so much time to go do your shopping or find what you needed. But now, that's all gone, right? You can do that pretty quickly. So now, I think the customer is savvier. They're really looking for a long-term connection and seeing what brands are transparent, what brands are really being sincere about who they are and who they want to serve. And then what are the values that we share, right? So that we can perhaps make the world a better place, make life more interesting and kind of improve the quality of life. So I'd say that's really one of the big drivers of that today.

**Steven Zakash** (3:01)
Yeah, that's so true. Tulio, what are the foundational principles of empathetic marketing that brands need to focus on to build those deeper connections that Mike's talking about?

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:12)
Yeah, one of the strong principles predicated on empathy is design thinking and the first phase of that is understanding. But I actually think there's a phase before understanding and that's curiosity. And that's where everything happens. You know, being curious about what is the problem, what you're trying to solve, being curious about the individuals, just being completely curious, that generates desire. And then from the desire comes understanding. So empathy really starts with understanding.
And you have to see customers not as just a data point. It's not about the demographic, psychographic information. These are all nice data points. But it's about understanding the human side of things, what they're struggling with, what their hopes are, and what their dreams are. So once you begin to understand those elements, then you're deeply connected with, you know, synthesizing the rational mind and the heart, right? The mind is the logical transaction oriented, which is important when I have a transaction with a client, but the heart is what makes people choose you because they want an experience. So it's really about listening more than selling and building trust by addressing the deeper needs of individual, not just the transactional needs, but their emotional needs, their experiential needs. And this is not just service level wants, but really digging in and understanding what makes the person tick. And as Mike just said, it's like, do you get them? So to get them, you first have to be curious about them and understand them at a much deeper level.

**Mike Lusky** (5:00)
Without a doubt, I think that's really well put on there. Tilly, I'm going to come back to you actually.
Let's talk, I guess, a little bit more about understanding that customer and even, you know, what's inside of their world. So how do we perhaps, you know, move, like you said, move beyond the demographic data, looking at customers as a data point, to really start to uncover the emotional drivers behind the customer behavior?