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Empathy Mapping The secret tool to help you BE your customer

Empathy Mapping

The secret tool to help you BE your customer

Empathy? (not to be confused with sympathy).

It’s a word we all use often.

“He or she is empathetic.” or “We need to show more empathy to our customers.”

Let’s reset things by clearing up what we mean by Empathy. According to the Cambridge Dictionary:

The ability to share someone else's feelings or experiences by imagining what it would be like to be in that person's situation.

So what’s this got to do with B2B Marketing and ABM? The answer is quite simple - everything.

B2B Marketing is often perceived as soulless. Campaigns, clicks, demos, proposals, negotiations, contracts, etc.

Just think - we talk about targets. We talk about prospects. We talk about targeting. We talk about winning (and losing). These are not very customer-centric, are they?

We talk about knowing our customers. We talk about developing deep relationships with them. But how much of that is actually true?

The CX and engagement gap

Research has shown the gulf between what brands believe (95% of brands believe they are delivering exemplary customer experiences) and customers (less than 65% of customers were happy with brand experiences).

In addition to this gap in CX, B2B trails behind its B2C cousin when it comes to engagement.

A survey of over one thousand purchasing decision-makers showed that 82% wished business advertising had the creativity of B2C, and 48% said they found it boring.

The survey went on to say,

so much business marketing falls flat because it doesn’t make the audience feel something.

And therein lies the problem and the answer: Feelings.

While we may be B2B that does not mean we should be Boring-to-Boring or leave our ‘human-side’ (whatever that means) to one side when our working day starts.

Speaking from my own experience, I am tired of being sold to. Tired of being treated as one more Marketer - one more contact in your database.

We respond to creativity. We respond to innovation. Just think of all those Christmas advertisements that bring a tear to our eye.

We’re all swamped by a sea of B2B Marketing. Just think how rarely you stop scrolling on LinkedIn. Just think how rarely you click on a programmatic advert you see while reading the NYT.

Why? Because they do not engage us. They do not talk to us. They do not understand us. They do not empathize with us.

The role of empathy in B2B Marketing

Empathy is hard-wired into our brains. The neurological mirrors and shared circuits that we possess give us the ability to understand what others are feeling.

Without empathy there can be no customer connection.

If we are starved of customer perspective we suffer from ‘customer understanding deprivation’ and a lack of ‘empathetic concern’.

No wonder our audiences don’t feel anything.

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“My number one principle in business is customer obsession. Truly understanding and anticipating your customers’ needs (empathy) is not only at the heart of delivering exceptional customer experiences but is also how leaders can stay ahead of the blind spots that can derail even the best of companies.”

John Chambers, Chairman Emeritus, Cisco and CEO, JC2 Ventures

Empathetic Marketing

To be clear. This is not about Voice of the Customer (VoC) surveys.

It is not about understanding the customer. It is about BEING the customer.

And how can you BE your customer?

To really benefit from empathetic thinking, us Marketers need to take a step back.

It’s so easy for us to think (and believe) that we know our customers - that we are one of them (or can be one of them).

The reality is that nothing could be further from the truth.

There is so much bias in our thinking. There is so much bias in our marketing.

And this bias impacts everything that we do - value proposition, messaging, artwork, account experience, etc.

So, as you can see, we need to BE our customers if we want to really connect, if we really want to empathize.

And here is where Empathy Mapping comes in.

Empathy Mapping

Empathy Mapping was created by Scott Matthews and Dave Gray, of the Vision and Strategy firm XPLANE back in 2010.

And in a nutshell - what is the Empathy Mapping? According to its creator,

It’s a tool that helps people step inside the heads of their audiences, putting a human-centered framework around co-creating a better picture of who we’re talking to when we design products, services, and experiences for people.

Dave Gray | XPLANE

Dave Gray, XPLANE

The goal of Empathy Mapping is simple:

1. Understand who we are looking to empathize with

2. What we want this person/group to do

The outcome for B2B Marketers and us ABMers?

1. Understand who we are
looking to empathize with

2. What we want this
person/group to do

3. We create better
products/solutions

4. We create better customer
experiences

5. We ensure that our solution/ product will help our audience do the action we want to see.

“Every creative problem we solve starts with the customer. Every strategic decision we make starts with the customer. Everything we communicate starts with the customer in mind. The Empathy Mapping process allows us to shift our mindset into the customer's shoes and connect with what they're thinking, feeling, seeing and doing. Not just our customers but their customers too."

Michael Christodoulou, Creative Director, strategicabm

How to Empathy map

It is best used at the very beginning of any campaign or design process as a discovery tool to help get everyone aligned and ‘on the same page’ and, importantly, to uncover insights about how your customers think.

It cannot be done in isolation.

It needs everyone with ‘intelligence’ on the customer(s) to come together to help build a strong picture - so Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, C-suite, etc.

We also recommend you add first and third-party research, survey results, testimonials, customer interviews, competitor insight, etc. to help fill in the gaps.

We’d also recommend doing an Empathy Map for all key members of the buying committee or group that you are looking to influence.

TIP

Fill in the diagram with real, tangible, sensory experiences, e.g. The “What do they HEAR?” section - try to think of what the person might hear (and how they would hear it). In the ‘What do they SAY?” section, write their thoughts as they you believe they would express them. Important: Do not put your words into their mouth. The objective is to understand and empathize with their situation to design better Marketing campaigns.

7 steps for effective Empathy mapping

Who are you looking to engage and empathize with? (think Decision Maker, Influencer, Blocker, etc.)
Write down all the key job titles, positions, or indeed individual names. [Do one Empathy Map for each one]
What is their situation?
What is their role in that situation?
Prioritize the most important roles.

What do they need to understand?
What do you want them to do (differently)?
What job/task do they need to get done?
What decision(s) do they need to make?
What does ‘good’ look like for them?
Focus on the action (DO). What change/action/shift are you looking to achieve?

How is their world changing?
What market trends are impacting their role?
What are they seeing happening within their own organization?
What are they seeing other people doing in the market?
What are they seeing their customers doing?
What are they consuming (content, media, etc.)?

What do they say to us?
What do they say to others?
What key messages do they share with their teams or their peers?
What do they say they are most optimistic about? (and pessimistic?)

What is a typical day for them?
What are their highest priorities?
Where do they ‘waste’ time?
Where would they want to spend their time?

What are they hearing from their leaders?
What are they hearing from their team?
What are they hearing from their customers?
Who most influences them? (e.g. influencers, publications, etc.)
What messages are they taking from these influencers?

What are their fears, frustrations, and obstacles?
What do they most want to gain (wants, needs, measures of happiness)?
What gives them optimism?

“In this fast-changing digital economy, winning enterprises are putting a laser focus on providing a world-class, end-to-end customer experience.”

Shantanu Narayen, Chairman, President, and CEO, Adobe Inc.

Empathy mapping output

Now that’s a lot of data, right?

And what does that look like in reality? Well, a lot of colored post it notes at first as in this example.

Source: https://openpracticelibrary.com/

For our clients’ ABM programs what we do next is:

1. Our team run an internal Empathy Mapping session with the data inputs provided by client as the first step (an ‘independent’ Empathy Map)

2. This internal Empathy Map is then presented to the client in an interactive workshop

3. The client reviews our ‘view’ and adds additional information to the Empathy Map

4. We take major threads that come out of the Empathy Map to inform the ABM strategy

5. We test these strategies and messaging with our ABM Kickstart Accelerator program (KAP)

6. The learnings from KAP inform our wider ABM strategy

7. The Empathy Map is then handed to our Creative team to guide the Value Proposition, Messaging, and Account Experience.

As you can see Empathy Mapping provides a wealth of customer insights that are all too often underexplored and unused.

Thank you to Dave Gray, XPLANE.com for providing such a wealth of information on this subject.

In honor of our colleague Anderson Malta who was passionate about this subject and did so much to make it part of the fabric of our organization and our customers’ ABM programs.