Marketing is Empathy

By Maria Geokezas, VP of Client Services at Heinz Marketing
So much is written about how to instill empathy into marketing.  A quick search online brings up how empathy is used in B2B marketing, how to enhance marketing with empathy, or how to make empathy part of your marketing strategy.  In my experience marketing is empathy.  They are synonymous in business.  If marketing is the connection between the business and the customer, without empathy the business will flounder.
Successful marketers recognize that empathy is embedded throughout the entire marketing process.  They put themselves in their customers’ frame of mind, figuratively walk in their shoes starting with research and strategy development all the way through execution and delivery.
Hopefully, empathy comes naturally to people who have chosen marketing as their profession.  But sometimes it doesn’t and a more disciplined approach to instilling empathy in marketing is needed.  If this is the case, here are