How Human Connection Can Benefit Your Brand Messaging
When I was 21, I started working as a bartender and continued slinging drinks for another nine years. Throughout that time, I worked in every type of pub, restaurant, and club you can think of.
No matter if I was making $13 craft cocktails or selling PBR for $2, the secret to being successful (ie, making good money) wasn’t determined by the type of customers or atmosphere of the bar.
You might assume that more money would be made at the swankier bar serving higher-priced cocktails. But making good money had little to do with the cost of a drink or the bougie-ness of the atmosphere.
Instead, a bartender’s success always came down to one thing — human connection.
The idea that human connection equates to good money doesn’t only apply to the service industry. Every type of business benefits from implementing intentional practices to help build human connections that ultimately turn into sales. Let’s take a closer look.
What is human connection?
Human connection is rapport.
It’s relatability.
It’s commonality.
It’s communication.
It’s vibe.
With bartending, it’s obvious that in an industry that relies on tips, you want to have a good rapport with your customers. But connecting with them takes more than learning their drink of choice, what they do for a living, or even their name.
True human connection goes beyond verbal communication. This had never been more evident to me than in my experiences living abroad. For over a decade, I’ve been able to connect with people that I don’t share a common language with because it happens beyond language.
Connection is made up of a few things:
Demeanor
Tone and Voice
Commonality
Synced energetic level
Demeanor
Your body language can speak a thousand words. It can communicate to another person how you’re feeling and how approachable and trusting you are.
Sure, our facial expressions communicate a lot and are a more obvious giveaway of how someone feels. Eye contact, smiles, and head nods can all be used to connect with another person.
Even hand gestures can be used in connecting with other people. Biologically, humans use hand gestures to communicate and determine how trustworthy someone is — it’s difficult to innately trust someone with their hands tucked behind their back, right?
But these gestures are only a shallow piece of the human connection pie. If we mirror the gesture and body movements that the other person is doing, then we deepen the connection through relatability.
By demonstrating likeness, you’re showing the other person that you have things in common, that you are alike. And likeness is biologically connecting since this is how we identify our fellow tribesmen.
Tone & Voice
More than the language that’s being used, the tone and voice of how the language is being shared with the receiver are key to connection. The tone is how you’re communicating — the pitch and volume in how you’re speaking — and the voice is the personality behind what you’re saying — friendly, casual, professional, sullen.
When we are after connection, it’s intuitive to match the other person’s tone and voice by mirroring their language and delivery. When we find that commonality, we connect.
For example, when I lived in UAE, I had a Bangladeshi doorman, Habib, at my apartment complex. He was so kind and all smiles, but we had to learn a new way to connect through communicating because his English was not well-developed, and shockingly I didn’t speak any Bengali.
So when I was communicating with him, I made sure to match how he spoke English — using simple words, speaking more slowly, and even adopting a slight accent that mirrored his own.
Normally, I speak in a high-pitched, borderline squeaky tone — don’t worry, I’m super self-aware. But with Habib, I dropped my tone and mellowed my voice not to scare him off with my American excitement. I even made a point to use his same head nod to signify yes and no and used a lot of his same hand motions and gestures to support my thoughts.
Because of this, we were able to connect over the three years I lived in that building. Notice how we weren’t fixated on converting each other to learning our native language to communicate more effectively. Instead, our energy was focused on using what we had available to use to find commonality, which in this case was our tone and voice.
Commonality
To build rapport, you need to find relatability. It’s hard to feel like you connect with another person if you can’t find anything you share in common. We naturally look for common interests, no matter how shallow they might be.
Remember when you were in Elementary school, and you’d have quizzes with your friends asking them: What’s your favorite show, food, color, etc.? We did this because we wanted to feel like we belonged to the group — like we could connect with our classmates and feel understood.
Now as adults, we still do the same thing. We bond with our people over Netflix series, sports, and concerts, and we do this by talking about the events.
Truthfully, when building rapport, you don’t have to be sincere about your interests to find that commonality. I know— don’t tell my Mom I said that.
Let’s be honest — how many boyfriends or dates have you had where you became the number one fan of his favorite sports team that you truly couldn’t give a flip about before? But by showing interest in his fave team, you found commonality and connection.
Synced energetic level
When we are around people we don’t know very well, we tend to adjust our own energy level to fit the temperature of the room. It’s like when you’ve gone to the dentist or doctor’s office and the waiting room is incredibly quiet. Even the receptionist uses her best "inside voice" to talk with patients and colleagues.
And most of us follow suit— we match their energy level and speak in a quieter tone and don’t use the time to try and strike up a conversation with the other people waiting like you might if you were in a pub. Otherwise, it can be offputting.
Most of us innately align our energy level with our surroundings. And in business, we build rapport with our clients when we align our own energy with our customers.
If we are getting on a call and we notice that they seem to have a lower energy level — they’re more reserved, maybe even shy — we innately meet them at their level. We don’t show up with noisemakers, horns, and confetti. Instead, we use our tone and voice to mirror our clients.
Those especially skilled at human connection are able to use their gifts to make the other person feel comfortable, and even use their charm and charisma to pull the other person’s energy to a higher level without bombarding them with their own.
Human connection & emotional branding
So how does human connection tie in with branding? With so many businesses out there and so many other choices for your customers to choose from, you need to stand out. When we think of standing out, we think our offers need to be better, our branding flashier, and our marketing strategy on steroids. But that’s not true.
What makes one brand stand out over another is its emotional connection with its customers.
Your brand’s connection with potential clients shows how you engage with your customers. They have a glimpse at what it would be like to work with you. The emotional branding— appealing to their needs, aspirations, and emotions— is evident in your sales calls, social media engagement, podcasts or YouTube episodes, your website content, and even your offers.
And when they feel seen, they feel connected to your brand.
Building an emotional brand strategy
You can build a trusting and memorable rapport with your audience by emphasizing human connection in your brand messaging. When strategizing emotional branding, ask yourself:
How do you want your customer to feel when they engage with your brand?
What do you want them to say about your brand to other people?
What do you want them to take away from interacting with your brand?
Research your ideal clients. Find out about them on a human level. What do they like watching on Netflix? What are their hobbies? What music do they listen to? What’s their favorite type of pet?
Apply emotional connection to your messaging by incorporating language, tone and voice, energy, and storytelling that appeals to their needs, and makes them feel understood and seen. Using your customer’s language is a great copywriting strategy — mirror what they say, how they say it, and the words or slang they like to use.
Write about the topics you know they are interested in, unrelated to your business. Is your audience all about travel? Then incorporate nods to adventure and destinations in your conversations and content. Be playful with your brand messaging in this way. If you know that your audience is especially keen on a topic, playfully use that in your messaging or brand identity.
For example, if your audience is all about exploration and adventure, you could consider creating messaging that playfully incorporates travel language (words like Bon voyage, explore, safari, terminal, seat number, and pina colada). This needs to fit and sound natural over sounding forced, but there are ways to do it.
Wrap Up
Human connection is all about building rapport with your audience, and building rapport is all about relatability. Building a good rapport with your audience builds trust, and that trust translates into sales.
Think about your audience and how you want them to feel when they experience your brand at any and all touchpoints. How do you want them to feel when they see your social media post? Or when they visit your website? Or get on a Discovery Call with you? Or opt-in to your email list?
Emotional branding is about creating brand messaging that’s rooted in human connection. If you’re looking to uplevel your messaging but aren’t sure where to start, schedule a free 45-minute consultation to discuss strategy and steps.
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