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The importance of human contact in a world of digital communications

Marketing strategy: We're all getting adept with our newfangled approaches to digital comms, but in the easing of traditional approaches, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

During the isolation of the Covid pandemic, we’ve all become better at digital communications. WhatsApp conversations, Zoom meetings, email updates, and social media posts have all become just what we do.

What used to seem slightly forced and false has become a natural part of the way we communicate. We’ve even managed to get past the ‘you’re on mute’ phase. Well, mostly.

And yet, what it has reinforced is how much we miss ‘traditional’ communications - the human contact of face-to-face meetings, the physical pleasure of seeing your company’s name in print, rather than on a website… the nostalgic joy of ‘meeting for a coffee’...

But these aren’t old-school pleasures that are in digital days, some sort of relic of a bygone age. Traditional communications still has the power to build relationships which are the core of any successful organisation.

While digital can build a customer base and sell direct to people on a significant scale, it’s unlikely to build the sort of human networks which build partnerships and long-term business relationships which are built on emotion as much as they are on logic.

So, while it’s natural that in all these on-off lockdowns and numbered tiers, that we all miss human contact, there is good business sense than, when we return to more usual times, you ensure that face-to-face meetings remain an important part of an integrated communications strategy.

As soon as you are safely able, make sure that ‘real’ meetings take a big part in your plans. What was once something that simply happened will need to become a core part of how you rebuild. Create scale with digital, but the power of the human touch is core - if you want to establish a connection with clients, suppliers or partners, then putting a human face to your business really helps.

All those non-verbal signals that aren’t obvious in a video call, all those diversions, digressions and inspirations that come from conversation make for a much more personable experience, and offer up greater insight.

It’s usual, too, to follow up those meetings with voice calls. While Millennials recoil from a ringing phone in horror, and treat their device as a host purely for text and photo apps, the connection made through a phone call can, especially in follow up to connections already made in person, also be invaluable. The inflections and shared jokes can cross the boundaries better than any number of emojis.

At times, these methods can seem as if from another world, and one where traditional media was king… There remains, too, physical value in those other relics from a different time.

‘Old’ media has the resonance of brand recognition and, while the online audience will often dwarf the readership of print editions of newspapers and magazines, there remains a kind of notability about print that helps brands.

While you may share the url of an article rather than buy 20 copies of the paper, cuttings still count, especially for (how shall we be kind…) demographics of a certain age.

There is also value in the nature of the relationships with the journalists on the legacy titles which is often stronger in print (or even former print) titles, where the old structures of specialist journalism still hold and you can build connections with journalists who know your industry and market.

All this relationship-based communication is core to a good strategy, but it’s time consuming. All those conversations and coffees take a lot longer to complete than a tweet. And while the conversation rate will be much higher, you’ll still be digital-first.

Even if you want to make those human connections the centre of everything, you can’t arrange meetings with people without the activity that gets them aware of your existence in the first place - you still need the old-school sales journey for your customers of AIDA: getting your customers aware of what you do; get them interested in your products and services; create a desire for those products and get them to take the action to make a purchase.

All of which are best delivered digitally - through search engine optimisation, through good social media, delivering good content, by paid-for activity if needs be, and, by measuring all of those activities and their effectiveness. That will give you the scale and breadth of audience you need and, dependent on the nature of your business, can get you the customers to buy or book online too.

Digital can do delivery. It can do scale. It can do networks. It can do targeting. And data. And much more. But it doesn’t do relationships so well. And those can underpin a lot in your communications work - building partnerships and customer loyalty that can drive your organisation forward.

Clinging to the old ways needn’t be a backward thing, it can be the secret weapon that others have forgotten they ever had.

Jimmy Leach is a digital strategist at Disquiet Dog, specialising in digital public relations and communications. Meet the team