Marketing and communications ask us to step outside our own perspective and into someone else’s. Who are you speaking to? What are they trying to accomplish? What’s getting in their way? What pressures influence their decisions, and what tradeoffs are they weighing?
Much of the foundations of marketing and messaging exist to answer those questions. Personas capture patterns in real human behavior. Pain points articulate obstacles that people face. Value propositions convey what a company offers into language that speaks to the person on the other side. When this work is done well, it reflects a genuine understanding of the people a brand is trying to reach.
Effective communication—and therefore, effective marketing—depends on that understanding. In other words, it depends on empathy.
B2B Buyers Want to Feel Understood
Empathy is often defined in broad or abstract terms, but at its core, it’s about understanding another person’s internal experience. The Greater Good Science Center defines empathy as “the ability to sense other people’s emotions, coupled with the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling.”
There’s a sense of relief that comes from realizing someone actually gets you, and it’s human nature to seek that out in all aspects of life—including as a customer or buyer. B2C campaigns tend to more overtly appeal to emotion, but the desire to be understood certainly isn’t limited to the consumer sector. B2B buyers want to know that a company genuinely grasps what they’re trying to accomplish and what’s at stake for them.
Salesforce has reported that 86% of B2B buyers are more likely to make a purchase when they feel a company understands their goals. Over two-thirds of senior marketing leaders say that B2B purchasing decisions are just as emotionally driven as B2C ones. Marketing and comms teams that tap into buyers’ preference for emotional connection and empathy have a notable advantage in winning the hearts and minds of their prospects.
Are You Leading with Empathy? (But actually…?)
Every business claims to seek to understand its buyers, but standard marketing practices don’t always fully reflect that intent.
Take personas. In theory, personas help teams understand who they’re trying to reach and what those people care about. In practice, they quickly become data points for achieving marketing metrics. It’s not that referencing a persona to understand a buyer’s likelihood to convert is inherently wrong. But when the humanity behind the persona is all but obscured in service of a KPI, you might have an empathy problem.
There’s often a similar disconnect in how teams talk about providing value to buyers. If your white paper promising useful insights is mostly void of substance, but your team gains an email address and a new lead to nurture, who actually benefits? Not the prospect. This empathy gap chips away at trust and credibility until it’s eroded completely.
Even the language marketers often use is a red flag. Markets (people!) are something to “target”; leads (people!) are something to “capture” or “win.” This aggressive, bellicose terminology signals that the focus is more on conquest than connection.
How to Lead with Empathy in B2B Marketing
There’s a strong instinct in marketing to lead with what makes your product or service impressive—to explain why it’s different, innovative, or best in class. Empathy challenges you to shift that focus from what you offer to what the buyer actually needs.
This shift is important because buyers don’t begin their journey thinking about your product; they begin with their own challenges and goals. Anchoring your marketing in empathy is a way of tying your messaging to the problems you help solve and the value you provide.
There are a few established frameworks that illustrate this approach clearly.
The StoryBrand Framework
The StoryBrand framework is a clear example of what it looks like to put your audience—not your brand—at the center of the story. The framework is built on a simple idea: the person reading your message is the hero. Your job is to position your company as the guide who helps that hero overcome a challenge and achieve a desired outcome.
When it comes to specific word choices, StoryBrand emphasizes “you” over “we,” focusing on the audience’s goals, frustrations, and aspirations before ever introducing the solution. While the framework is mostly associated with website copy, the underlying principle applies to nearly any type of marketing communication.
Any time you’re communicating with an audience, the question is the same: are you centering yourself, or are you speaking to what matters to them? If your message starts by explaining who you are, rewrite it to start with what your audience needs.
The VBF Messaging Approach
Messaging and positioning expert Emma Stratton has built her business around helping B2B tech companies demonstrate value and differentiate from competitors. Her VBF messaging framework establishes a clear, buyer-centric messaging order:
1. Value proposition. The big win. The end outcome your customer really wants—the aspiration your product or service helps them achieve. Example: Generate more revenue faster.
2. Benefit. The superpower. What your audience can now do, be, or feel because of your product. Example: Reduce manual work and errors.
3. Feature. The secret weapon. The technology, capabilities, or functionality that make the benefit possible. Example: Intelligent workflow automation.
The VBF messaging framework is an excellent example of what it looks like to lead with empathy. Note that the company’s offer is the final part of the messaging, coming only after establishing a clear understanding of the buyer.
The Expert-Led Content Approach
Expert-led content—content that is rooted in people’s knowledge, experience, and skills—begins from a place of respect for audiences and their desire for actual substance. It treats content as an opportunity to share ideas and perspectives that help people think more clearly about the problems they’re already trying to solve.
The goal is to offer something valuable—whether that takes shape as a byline article, a newsletter, a case study, or a LinkedIn post. Even when the content is brief, it’s designed to stand on its own, delivering value without requiring a click or download.
At Every Little Word, empathy and respect also inform our approach to develping expert-led content. We recognize that the experts we work with are busy leaders with high demands on their time and energy. Often, they’re stepping into an interview with us between meetings, without the benefit of context-switching or extensive preparation. Our processes are intentionally designed to accommodate this reality. Interviews and review cycles are structured to reduce friction and make it easy for experts to contribute thoughtfully, even when their attention is divided.
Want to discuss expert-led content for your company? Book a call.
When in Doubt, Remember the Golden Rule
At its core, leading with empathy is no different from the Golden Rule we’ve all been taught to follow: treat others the way you would want to be treated. How would you want to be approached? What would make you feel respected? What would signal that someone actually understands what you’re dealing with?
When you think of customers as real people rather than segments or targets, different instincts guide your marketing and communications. By showing genuine care and understanding, you can build your reputation and earn trust from the people on the other side of your messaging—the kind of result that leads to sustainable, long-term growth.
