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It’s an unpredictable time for us marketers. People are still recovering from a tough year, financially, mentally, or both. The last thing you think people want dozens of phone marketing or cold calling, automated email, and clickbait headlines – and you’re right.

The idea of ​​trustworthy and transparent marketing – or simply responsible marketing – is not new. Nevertheless, it is gaining in importance as many companies with initially small online presences have eventually shifted more assets and more effort into digital marketing. The recent surge in digital marketing seems to mean an endless barrage of spam from companies marketing indiscriminately to the masses.

So how do we define responsible marketing? For me it means smarter, targeted marketing with the customer and his pain points always in view.

Reach out to the customers that you can benefit from

Marketing has a really great ability. It has the power to reach people on a primal level and to strongly influence their thoughts and actions. Since our actions as marketers can have a significant impact on people, it is our responsibility to promote our product or service in such a way that its reach is limited only to those who we believe can benefit from our offerings.

There’s a lot of really great marketing out there, but let’s admit it, a lot of marketing is really spam. Spam significantly degrades the quality of leads, and more importantly, it’s annoying and gives all marketers a bad rap. We need to move beyond the lazy approach of casting a wide net in hopes of catching the right fish and instead prioritize reaching a smaller, more targeted audience and tailoring our solutions specifically to audience vulnerabilities. Your resulting lead pool will be smaller, but it will also be filled with much higher quality leads.

How can you tell if you are in the Spam vs. Good Marketing camp? First, take a look at who you are marketing to. Do you know your ideal customer? Are you doing your best to reach this customer? Is your content just promotional or are you helping this ideal customer understand how your solution will solve their problem?

Your marketing material should be educative first. It should demonstrate understanding of a customer’s problem while describing how your offering can help. At Moz, we provide free educational resources on our website because we know that the more we educate people about SEO to increase the website’s visibility, the more likely we are to reach the customers who benefit from our benefits (for example ) SEO solutions.

It takes patience. You need to respect your audience so that you give them the time and space to take the next step and convert or buy at their own pace – not yours.

Related Podcast: ShepHyken: CX Decoded Podcast: Building Customer Trust in Unprecedented Times

Build trust and connect with your customers

I’ve already talked about how storytelling is the best way for marketers to build lasting relationships with customers. People want to experience something human and hold onto a larger narrative. When people feel like they are speaking to them directly, it creates a greater sense of connectedness and interest in whatever you are marketing.

Connection creates lifelong customers. Lifer, as we call them, have more value in the long run than higher volumes from entry-level customers. They spend more on premium products, accompany you even in difficult times and recommend your brand to others. We connect and bind Lifers through some core values ​​- empathy, transparency and generosity.

Everyone’s having a hard time lately. Adjusting to new standards is exhausting, and the last thing a customer wants is to dig through clickbait and spam to find answers to their problems. When I say empathy, I mean that you are taking the time to see the world from your customer’s point of view. It ties in with your responsibility as a marketer to meet customers where they are and guide them through the journey instead of pushing them to do something they may not yet want or need. When customers see your commitment to experiencing the buying process in their spare time, they will be far more likely to trust you.

Given the recent data breaches and questionable data collection, transparency is imperative right now. Customers and people who interact with your material need to know that their data and information is safe with you. It’s also about showing your interest in new prospects and truthfully communicating who your product is for.

Respect, responsibility and success

People get used to the status quo. Currently, dozens of robocalls per day, irrelevant email, and other forms of spam are the status quo. Is this marketing the future? I hope not. Imagine what a beautiful world it would be if we all worked hard to really understand who could benefit from our offer and only address these interested parties. Then the focus was on educating these prospects on how we can help.

The hope is that we will all use this power that we have as marketers to reach audiences, acquire lifelong customers, and responsibly guide them on their journey.

Christina Mautz has served as the strategic marketing director for some of the world’s largest technology companies, including Amazon and Yahoo !, as well as several SaaS startups in Seattle, where she was nicknamed the Chief Problem Solver. She is currently the CMO and Head of Sales for Moz, the world’s leading SEO software company. In this role, she brings her passion for strategic problem solving to the sales and marketing teams and aligns them with creative strategies to drive growth.