How to Boost Sales by Humanizing Your Ad Campaigns

In an age of digital marketing, people have become desensitized to typical ad campaigns, it’s not viable to speak to your audience as a mega-corporation anymore, since they’re less likely to care about you.

Instead, you see people caring about brands that appeal to them, and if you’re somebody who’s wondering why seemingly “unprofessional” brands are getting all the business clout, then you’re missing a key aspect.

These brands aren’t looking for “professional”, they’re looking to sound human. As a result, they shine like a beacon in the sea of copy-pasted advertisements that all sound the same.

They understand that individuals stopped caring about brands long ago, they’re now interested in dealing with humane businesses, and that’s how you can boost your sales by humanizing your ad campaigns.

However, before getting into it, we need to understand something…

Why Should You Humanize Ad Campaigns?

Allows for Better B2C Communication

If you don’t want your brand advertisements to look like PSAs then you should consider humanizing your ads.

While there’s nothing wrong with PSAs, they’re not really intended to spark engagement or incite reactions, are they?

Humanizing your ad campaign is great because it allows you to communicate better with your clients and customers. When they’re not talking to a soul-less AI that sells a product, people feel more comfortable engaging with your brand.

Your audience is more likely to share beneficial feedback, which no amount of research can give. Just by addressing your concerns, you can boost your sales.

It also helps you showcase your brand’s personality, if you spent all this time and effort making your brand appealing to the audience, then sound like an AI when you try to market your product, then what’s the point?

First impressions last, and you should strive for the best first impact when you first interact with any prospects, that way you can piggyback off of that feeling to boost your conversion rates.

Improves Customer Loyalty

Nowadays a lot of customers will only deal with brands if they align with their politics. So, by humanizing your brand, you’re clearly showcasing your core values and your vision for how your brand is going to run.

As a result, you’ll be able to better attract people who are already invested in your cause and are more likely to stay loyal to your brand due to the stances you’re taking.

One of the important metrics to measure a customer’s experience, apart from product quality, is their relatability with your brand. Customers who have a positive experience with your ad are more likely to buy your product.

However, that’s not the end of it, loyal customers are a huge opportunity to get recurring revenue, and they serve as free brand ambassadors, willingly telling their peers who have the same views as them about your brand.

How Can You Humanize Ad Campaigns?

In an extension of that question, what does it really mean to humanize an ad campaign? Typically, when people think of anything that has a human touch, they automatically go toward ads invoking emotion.

When you humanize your ad campaign, you stand apart from your competitors who might sound like AI machines by creating ads that incite emotional responses.

It helps give your brand a face to talk to, and help the audience connect with you on a deeper level, and as such, they’ll be more likely to engage with your ad.

You can humanize your ad by taking the focus away from your brand, and instead concentrating on what your prospects might want or need a problem solved, humanize your campaigns by understanding the way your customers face their problems and offering them unique solutions.

Go Beyond the Data

If you’ve tried building any online campaign, such as Facebook ads, you’ve probably been relying on things such as keywords to get your brand in front of its ideal customer.

While keywords are important, and they can help your brand reach its intended audience, if you’re not personalizing your campaign to appear human and deal with the problems of your audience, it’s highly unlikely that anyone is going to care.

A great way to look past the raw data and come up with ways to capitalize on that is what Alec Brownstein did.

He targeted 5 top executives and created google ads that specifically targeted them since he knew that during that time period, everyone was googling their names in order to see if they were popular or not, and he did something brilliant.

He made sure he was the top search result by bidding on the name of the executives, since there wasn’t really any competition, he got the top spot!

His ad went something like this:

Hey, [Executive Name]

Googling yourself is a lot of fun. Hiring me is fun, too.

And yes, his advertisement was a success, he was offered a job by one of the directors he targeted.

He thought the same way his target audience did, and he looked past the data in order to share a uniquely “human” ad that stood out among all the other ads.

You might have considered your demographics in terms of age groups, so if you’re selling luxury watches, you’ll probably be talking to a different age group than if you were selling sneakers.

If you’ve only considered demographics to understand your audience’s age group, then you’re not really humanizing your brand. Think about it, if you’re talking to 20-year-olds, wouldn’t they feel more inclined to read your ad if it “speaks” their language?

Careful not to overdo it though, as it might backfire on you if you’re overselling the lingo aspect of your ad.

Tell a Story

A great way to humanize your ad campaign is to tell a story, one that shows how they can succeed by getting your product.

Nowadays, social media ads are great for storytelling, you’ve got Instagram stories, Facebook carousels, and TikTok slides, all make it easier for you to market your product through storytelling

You can tell stories such as your customer success stories, it can help them get some much-needed social proof that your product works, you can also humanize your brand while you’re at it with stories of how your staff goes about their day to make your product great.

However, you should keep in mind that telling a story mustn’t be solely about your brand. In fact, your brand shouldn’t be the focus of the story at all.

Your audience is interested in the hero’s journey, where the hero can face a problem, get guidance to solve it, and eventually conquers said problem.

In that hypothetical your brand isn’t the hero, it’s the guide, so make sure when you’re telling a story that you make it absolutely clear that the story is about whoever is reading the ad, and how they can overcome their problem with the solution your product gives.

Are You Still Using the Direct Marketing Method?

Direct marketing methods had their golden period way before the widespread of the internet. However, think about it, are your prospects going to click on an ad that sounds just like every other business?

You need to have an ad that stands out with personality, you should make sure that the first impression your audience gets from your brand is familiarity, not aloofness.

The direct sales approach stopped working with most prospects. Instead, you need to take your audiences through marketing funnels, these funnels gained popularity during the 2020 lockdown, but they’ve been in use long before then.

Essentially, you’ll need to get the attention of your audience through your online ads, then instead of having them click right towards checkout, you should promise them more information if they click on your ad.

That helps your prospect understand that they’re not committing to a sale, and it’s like having a conversation with someone that wants to show them something.

Once they’re on your landing page, you should start by giving them information on the product, giving its strengths and weaknesses, as well as steering them towards the sale eventually.

Add Faces

As simple as it sounds, faces go a long way in humanizing your brand to your audience. Humans are social creatures, and the impact of a smiling face is way more reassuring than any graphic you can add.

By adding faces to your ad campaign, you’re also banking on that social proof aspect, even if your audience can tell that they’re either p[aid actors or stock images, subconsciously, they’ll feel more at ease interacting with your brand after they see a human face associated with it.

In conclusion, people want to see uniquely human brands, and you can do that by adding your own spin to the ads you put out. Consumers are more interested in building a relationship with your brand, by capitalizing on that interest, you’ll be able to boost your sales by a huge margin.

We hope you’re now able to understand how you can boost your sales by humanizing your ad campaigns. With Cosmic advertisement, you’ll be able to tap into a team of marketing experts that can take your brand, humanize it, and boost your sales, book a call with us!