Does Empathy Break The Marketing Funnel? (with Carmen Collins)

Scott Murray: Hello, and welcome to the show. Today, you'll hear the advice of Carmen Collins. She's an award winning social media influencer and content marketing leader who specializes in driving results through empathy and storytelling. She'll add a little more depth to the word empathy and tell us whether it's something that can fit in to a modern marketing funnel.

My name is Scott Murray, and this is the content brief where I bring you the key points and takeaways from conversations with today's experts and humanized and innovative content. Every time you hear this sound, that's a key takeaway from today's episode. Let's get started.

Thanks for joining me today. As marketing teams learn how to evolve their content strategies to be more humanized. They may hear the word empathy a lot. Your content needs empathy. But what does that mean? Well, for more traditional marketers, it's another example of how they may have to just rethink their approach to marketing.

But now what does that mean? Well, take this scene from one of my favorite movies. Ford versus Ferrari. The Ford Motor Company is experiencing a downturn, and they're falling behind the competition. So, Mr. Ford wants new ideas. Lee Iacocca comes in and shows them a presentation about how modern car buyers just don't want cars for the same reasons anymore, and they have to tap into those feelings.

And emotions about how they feel about their cars. And after a while, Ford executive Leo Bibi offers up a question that triggers a crucial conversation.

Ford V. Ferrari: Lee, in the last three years, you and your marketing team have presided over the worst sales slump in U S history. Why exactly should Mr. Ford listen to you?

Because we've been thinking wrong. Ferrari, and they've won four out of the last five Lamont. We need to think. Ferrari makes fewer cars in a year than we make in a day. We spend more on toilet paper than they do on their entire output. You want us to think like them. Enzo Ferrari will go down in history as the greatest car manufacturer of all time.

Why? Is it because he built the most cars? Nah, it's because of what his cars mean. Victory. Ferrari wins at Le Mans, people, they, they want some of that victory. What if the Ford badge meant victory?

Scott Murray: Now notice how corporate is talking about size and numbers, things consumers don't care about. And Lee was talking about tapping into emotion, really more specifically in this case, a sense of belonging.

That's the type of change empathy can have on marketing. That's what we're talking about when we say infuse emotion, infuse empathy into marketing. And it all kind of starts with getting to know your consumer and how they feel and what they want and what they need. I attended content marketing world in Washington DC last year and I had a chance to attend Carmen Collins's presentation on empathy.

She called it the missing piece in your content strategy. And I loved how she framed. What empathy was, why you need it, and more importantly, how you integrate it into content. Carmen is a visionary who built and led social and content teams for brands like Intuit QuickBooks, Wish. And Cisco, or by the way, she created the award winning At We Are Cisco program.

She's won a Webby Award, and she's been recognized as one of the top women in communications, top women in PR, and she's been recognized four times as Social Media Professional of the Year. And when I talked with her, I wondered where this passion for empathy started. Was there a singular moment, maybe a downturn like the Ford Motor Company?

Was it a game changing experiment, a happy accident? Well, it turns out it was none of those things.

Carmen Collins: Well, I think this is something that I've been doing since the start of my career. And I didn't really have a word to put on thing that I was pushing the brands that I worked for to do. And a few years ago.

I partnered with a former colleague and we started to write a book just about empathy. And the more I studied it, the more I realized this is what I was trying to push. This is what I was trying to achieve in the activations I was running in social. And I started to realize that all of the tools that marketers used to one, determine a strategy, To measure that strategy, it was lacking empathy entirely.

That's where I started because empathy is a word we toss around like confetti. It's like we're on Oprah. You have empathy and you have empathy. Look under your chair. You have empathy, but nobody really knows what it means. And so when I talk to fellow marketers, I, I try to explain, okay, first you have to understand what it is.

Because you're probably already trying to use it, you just don't know what it is. Especially in social and content, those teams are the closest, in my opinion, to the audience you're trying to reach. They're the people that see the comments. They're the people that see how many people are visiting the site and what's drawing them to the site.

I think that we've always had more audience empathy from this ground up perspective. And I don't, when I say ground up, I don't mean like we're the peons of the world, we're just the closest to the audience,

Scott Murray: You know, today, the content and social side of an organization should not be the only part of the company that recognizes the need for empathy and has a deep understanding of the audience.

This should be understood across the organization, especially those who have any role in audience facing content or communications. But what about the idea of empathy always being there, there's just not a name for it? Do you think that's happening in your organization? Empathy has always been there, but you just didn't know what to call it.

And could it be why it's so hard to implement it? Or maybe it's just the wrong words and context are used internally to figure it out. For example, she told me that words like authentic are used a lot in marketing conferences and advice blogs. You've probably seen it yourself, but it really isn't the right word to be using, especially since authentic basically means be real.

Or, don't mislead. Empathy goes deeper. She also says an emphasis on being authentic in content keeps the focus on us, and what we're doing Instead of placing the focus on the consumer first, but it's interesting to consider her point about a focus on empathy always being there, especially among those who are creating audience focused content like social media.

But what if the people in those departments identify empathy as a need and content, but other parts of the company like the sea level. We're never thinking about empathy. They were thinking about things like a marketing funnel.

Carmen Collins: There are still days when I have to have conversations with an executive vice president who makes three times my salary.

Why there is no caption or there's no lake rather in an Instagram caption. I'm like, you don't have to go talk to suck. I have nothing to do with that. But why am I still having as a team lead, as a strategist, why am I still having these conversations with executives? Clearly they don't understand what we're doing every day.

So I think that's why the marketing funnel exists in a way, because it was our way of justifying our jobs. I can measure awareness and I can measure engagement. But I can't measure sales. We've never been able to measure sales in social, in an effective way. I think that's our first challenge. We've created this crutch for ourselves that has bathed this into a corner.

Nobody else understands it to see our value. We create content for that funnel. We create content on a blog for SEO, not for our audience. Google just changed the game with NCO and AI and April. And everybody's like. Well, we're done.

I'm like, well, you're not done. You've just been doing it wrong the whole way.

And now Google has changed things and now you're caught unaware. It's the same thing when TikTok changes their algorithm or threads comes onto the scene randomly one day and everybody's like, Oh, what do we do? If you know how to create empathetic content for your audience, it doesn't matter if you're following the marketing funnel, explaining your value to your boss and your C suite is a manner of storytelling.

So this marketing funnel KPI thing that we've had going on for 13 years is the wrong way to explain your value because we're still explaining it. It's not working. Something's missing. What's missing is that we're not telling the right stories to our executives because we're designing things to fit into somebody else's algorithm or somebody else's SEO capabilities.

And what we're not doing is saying, this is what our audience needs and wants. So people are like, put this up, put this on LinkedIn or put this on the blog. And our first question before we say, okay. Should be what is your goal? What are you trying to do? Because if you are trying to just get people to buy, I can put it up, But your expectations need to be that it's a waste of all of our time.

It's like I worked for a company We launched a multi million dollar rebrand And the first question was how many sales will you drive? That's not the purpose of a multi million dollar rebrand. If you wanted us to drive sales, you shouldn't have spent multi million dollars on a rebrand. That's not what that's for.

What is your goal? Because if we're agreed on the goal, then we have this narrative that doesn't need the funnel anymore to prove our value anymore.

Scott Murray: When you think about it, this is like the Ford versus Ferrari situation. For years, marketing has had a very one dimensional based way to justify marketing strategy and tactics and or quantifying results.

But before the Internet, marketers were also in control. The Internet gave control to the consumers. They have the power, and they change the game. And more recently, different generations have changed the game.

Carmen Collins: Edelman, who releases the Trust Barometer every year, just came out recently with another study.

Specifically about the marketing funnel, which I thought, well, how timely for me. And, um, you know, we blame Gen Z for a lot of things, so, uh, I'll love to you Gen Z. I don't think Gen Z broke the marketing funnel, I just think they put a magnifying glass on it. Um, I don't think Gen Z is any different than any other generation.

When it comes to buying, but I have been just calling it the customer journey funnel, which again, it's not the best name for it, but it is not, it's not a straight line. And Gen Z in this Edelman survey that they just released Gen Z. Has put a big old magnifying glass on the fact that sometimes your brand funnel starts at the bottom.

So, sometimes there is no branding when somebody buys a thing. Think of an impulse buy in the Target checkout line, right? You didn't buy that pack of gum because you saw some commercial or you saw a social, you're like, I want a piece of gum. I'm walking through the Target checkout line. It's right here.

It's designed to make you buy it without really thinking. But then if you really like it, now you're a brand advocate and you've entered the old funnel. If you think about how it's, you know, awareness, uh, consideration action and it's basic form. Some people have 12 layers of the funnel. But if you think about it in that way, Gen Z has really showed that that marketing funnel does not work.

You can enter the marketing funnel at any spot. You can exit the marketing funnel at any spot. I was told by TikTok that my makeup was not cool anymore, so I had to And when you walk into a makeup store, you, you test the colors on your hands, because your hands are the closest to your face color. So, you test different shades on your hand, and by the time you walk out of a Sephora or an Ulta, you look like you're a clown, because you've got 85 different colors on your hand.

And I was in Ulta, and I was looking for, they have little, um, stations with, um, Makeup remover and cotton balls that you can take it off with and I was looking for one and a woman in that store Suggested she's like ma'am. Can I help you? And I said, I'm just looking for the makeup remover She's like, oh, I've got something for you.

Don't worry. Worry about that She was representative of specific cosmetic brand Clinique and she's like I've got something for so she came back with this It's called melt away It's a lotion and she put it on my hand and it literally melted all the makeup away. I wasn't even a fan of Clinique before I walked in the store.

I wasn't there for that product, I was there for something else. All she did was offer me health and a product that helped me when I needed it. I walked in the store, I didn't even buy it. But now I have been an advocate for Clinique and this product since walking out of the store. I told everybody about it.

And I never purchased it. That's why the marketing funnel is broken. Because you can enter the funnel at any place. But in my world, it looks more like a highway. Like a roundabout. Like a clover highway. Because it feeds into each other. It's like two infinity symbols put together. It feeds into each other at all times.

This is why integrated marketing is so important because I have never understood why paid social, organic social, influencer sit on different teams. What the heck are we doing?

That's not how this works. Influencer feeds paid, feeds organic, feeds paid. Like we're all intertwined.

Scott Murray: So this Clinique story makes me think about a similar story Robert Rose told me when we discussed why your customer isn't always a buyer. The story involved a guy named Dan who was a valuable audience member for his company at the time. And this guy. Never met a salesperson, never once became a qualified opportunity in their business, yet he drove one million dollars to the business.

Now how did he do that? It's like a riddle. It's almost like a riddle where it's like, you know, a guy, he's not a customer, he never buys anything, never talks to sales, but he generates the company 1 million. How did he do it? I mean, he came to all of their events, he subscribed to their webinar program, but he never became a lead.

And one day at one of their events, Robert approached him and asked him why he had never talked to any of their salespeople or asked about products. His answer? He worked at a company that simply could not afford their particular product. He was never going to buy, but he got a ton of value out of their content, and he really enjoyed the way they presented it.

So, while he indulged in all of that content, Dan recommended Robert's company and that content to multiple clients that would get value from it and could afford their software. Dan loved their approach to thought leadership That much. He drove more than a million dollars worth of referral value from the value of their thought leadership, and that is an emotional connection.

And as he points out, this is not the sort of thing that shows up in a spreadsheet. The marketing strategy has to be structured in the right way.

Robert Rose: If I go to the CFO with that same thing and I go, Hey, look, me, Dan, someone who's never bought anything from us at all. And never become an MQL, never become an SQL.

He's a very valuable member of our community of our business because he's recommended us for more than a million dollars worth of business in our pipeline. That is an incredible marketing strategy, but it doesn't show up on a spreadsheet. It does show In the measurement, if we measure our content marketing appropriately and an audience impact in the right way.

Scott Murray: They understood how to do that, and it started by thinking of the audience first and not developing content to fit a funnel statistic.

This also makes me think about how many times in recent weeks I've seen Chris Walker from Refine Labs demonstrate all of the details your attribution software misses. While your audiences finds you, connects with you, and learns about you in other ways that don't fit into its algorithm. Therefore, you can't rely on it for everything.

Earlier, I mentioned Carmen's impressive history developing social media campaigns for brands. When you think about everything we've talked about today, it's kind of easy to humanized, empathetic view of social media can generate impactful opportunities, sometimes just by listening.

Carmen Collins: So let's bring up Stanley.

The insulated mug company, right? Like this is a, I think a really good example of a marketing campaign that had empathy. I don't know about you and maybe it's just cause I'm not cool enough, but I was still in the Yeti cooler drain, right? Like I was still a Yeti girl and I had all my stickers on all my Yetis.

So I wasn't really aware of Stanley and sort of the, the cult following it had. One TikToker had her car catch on fire in the aftermath of her car burning. She has her Stanley mug in her cup holder and she pulls it out. And wiggles it and she's like, y'all, there's still ice in this thing. And now I see it everywhere.

People are standing in line at Target to get the latest Stanley color. Stanley's competitor, you know, are now behind the eight ball and trying to attack them and different ads. But nobody at Stanley was like, okay, I'm going to market this mug, top of the funnel, and then I'm going to post a TikTok about it and get some engagement and then people are going to bop.

No, they started with social listening because again, Social and content are the closest to the audience and you should listen to them more and they should have a seat at the table. But that's a whole nother podcast and Stanley's like, okay, we're just gonna pay for your car. Your car burned. We feel bad for you.

We're glad you're a Stanley customer. We're gonna buy you a new car. That blew up for them. Great. It should have because it had empathy. Listening to your audience and Seeing what your audience relates to, what they respond to, what they're going through, helping them, and then going back to your executives, which Stanley should have done, and I hope they had a big parade when they did it.

To say, yeah, that's the value of social listening right there. It didn't come from the budget. It didn't come from the CFO. It did. The CFO didn't say, how are you driving value today? We're always driving value.

Scott Murray: I saw this same story. I saw the visual of. The Stanley Cup in the burned car with the ice in it. It was really something. And Stanley was very smart to jump on this. This is very similar to that guy whose truck broke down, and after recording a video of himself skateboarding to work drinking Ocean Spray. Ocean Spray visibility and sales skyrocketed, and they bought him a new truck in the process.

Now, the moral of the story isn't buy people new cars and trucks to boost sales, that's really not that. But it's about listening, humanizing, and breaking out of the old, what I like to call marketing science, that limits our capacity to connect with people. I mean, think about it. There probably isn't a marketing department anywhere that would have conjured up a social media video.

Featuring a skateboard, their product, and Fleetwood Mac. And this is just one example about the power of listening and connecting, instead of promoting, dictating, and measuring.

Listening, connecting, and learning are key parts of a content strategy that embodies real empathy. It's a better way of saying, Get to know your audience, which we hear a lot. Another phrase you hear a lot is put yourself in your audience's shoes. In fact, full disclosure, I say that a lot, but Carmen challenges you to rethink that phrase and that idea if you're serious about empathetic content,

Carmen Collins: It's impossible to pick yourself up and drop yourself in someone else's experience and understand it in that moment of time. I use the shoe metaphor when I talk about this, cause we're walking in other people's shoes, right? If you're a woman and you're walking in high heels and you're walking on cobblestones, that's an entirely different experience.

Then if you're in slippers, walking around your house, empathy is taking the time to walk beside your audience, to walk beside someone and start to have your shoes feel like theirs.

Scott Murray: Empathy is definitely a driver of innovative content strategy because it requires brands to evolve the way they approach content and their audience.

It could be that missing piece that helps you do all those things you hear about from modern marketing experts, like get to know your audience, speak to them in humanized ways, generate an emotional response, build trust and a relationship. So while others look to AI to give them a faster way to get funnel based, company first, generic promotional content out the door, you can join those who are making real connections through empathy.

Like AI, Empathetic Marketing is kind of new as well, but we should know enough to know how to infuse it into our content strategies.

Carmen Collins: It's a brave new world. Empathy is a new field of study. It's only about 10 years old and, you know, a psychological study that's not very old. So we're learning these things all the time.

I just think marketers have known this in our core for a while. We've just been trapped by this funnel and this idea of how do we prove our worth? And I just think we've been going about it. The wrong way.

Scott Murray: Okay. Let's revisit some key takeaways from today's show, developing a content strategy that includes real empathy starts with getting to know your audience and how they feel about their challenges and needs. Social and content teams are the closest people to your audience. So involve them in a strategy, especially one that involves empathy, but they shouldn't be the only ones who recognize its importance.

That should be company wide and marketers have to be able to tell the right stories To other parts of an organization, authentic isn't the same as empathetic. Authentic puts the focus on the marketer and basically means be real. Empathy goes deeper and puts the audience first. Old marketing funnels created a crutch for businesses to narrowly measure what they could call results, but now it's back them into a corner.

It creates content for things like SEO. And not audience and content is developed for somebody else's algorithm or spreadsheet instead of the needs of the audience. Marketing funnels cannot cover all customer journeys anymore because people can enter it or leave it in multiple places. There are also humanized components in a modern content consumers journey that the funnel can't track or quantify.

Instead, you might want to view the company brand content process more like a highway. If you learn how to create empathetic content, changes in things like the Google algorithm or social trends won't matter as much. The customer isn't always a buyer. They could get value and never buy, but tell all their friends about you because of a positive experience at a store or through content.

Beware of old marketing science that limits your means to find new and innovative ways to connect with your audience and let social listening create opportunities for you as well. Listening, connecting and learning are core parts of an empathetic content strategy. I'd like to thank Carmen Collins for being our featured expert today.

I will have links to her site and social media in the show notes for this episode. If you'd like to learn more about how I can help you innovate your content in creative or humanized ways, Visit my website, the content, innovator. com I'm Scott Murray. Thanks for joining me on today's edition of t