• by Sarah Lang , Op-Ed Contributor, October 7, 2015

A huge amount of marketing and community building is done online. All this online activity generates a tremendous amount of data, which is a goldmine for marketers. It’s reassuring to measure things, tweak what you are doing and see the numbers improve. 

Our love affair with data may seem like the marketing community is leaving the notion of nurturing offline, in-person relationships in the dust. But all this connectivity has thrown the need for face-to-face marketing into sharp relief. As marketers increasingly turn to digital channels, it has also grown increasingly difficult to get their messages heard. The noise out there is deafening. 

Since the benefits of face-to-face marketing aren’t easily quantifiable, I wanted to highlight why it is important. Here’s what I found.

Nonverbal communication

Research shows that body language is more important in revealing what people want than the actual words they say. There are thousands of social rules that we are all trained from birth to be sharply attuned to, and in person, you can pick up on them much more clearly. 

For example, if someone says “yeah, right” in person, you can immediately gauge whether they are being sarcastic or agreeing with you by their tone of voice and body language. If someone types “yeah, right” online, the subtleties of the expression are lost, which can lead the recipient down a rabbit hole of uncertainty.

In addition to gaining greater insight into your customers, face-to-face communication also enables marketers to leverage nonverbal cues to their own advantage. In-person communication makes it easier to bond and react appropriately to situations, and leads to stronger relationships. 

Social Identity Theory

Putting people into categories helps us understand how to interact with them. This process, known as Social Identity Theory, happens in three stages: categorization, identification, and social comparison. 

We group people together by category, place ourselves into certain groups, then begin to adopt that group’s identity. The more we identify with a category, the more our self-esteem is tied to group membership. In the social comparison stage, we want our group to compare favorably to other groups, because that’s where our self-esteem is tied up.

So what does this have to do with marketing? Spending time with people enables you to establish that you are part of the same group, whatever that group may be. Business/brand guru Seth Godin refers to these groups as tribes.

Tribe-building is much more effective offline. It gives you the opportunity to form authentic connections with people and convince them that they are part of your group. And once you identify as part of the same group, your fellow group members will go out of their way to make you look great to others. 

Yelp Elite is a great example of this. The more Elite Yelpers hang out together and get to do “insider-y” things, the more they’ll talk about the places they go, and the more they promote Yelp. Yelp strengthened its community by creating a real-world, offline tribe. 

Empathy

Empathy is important to friendship, but it is difficult to feel empathy for strangers. From an evolutionary perspective, this makes sense. You don’t know how a stranger will react, so you get stressed out. If you’re stressed out about something bad happening to yourself, you won’t have strong feelings if something bad happens to the stranger. 

This can create a challenge for brands and marketers as they try to foster connections with strangers. The good news is that it doesn’t take much to transition from a “stranger” into “friend,” at least in terms of producing an emotional, empathetic response. One study from McGill University found that playing Rock Band with a stranger for 15 minutes is enough to reduce social stress and overcome the hurdle of unfamiliarity. Once an influencer considers you a friend, they are more likely to be excited by your news and share it. 

Marketing is increasingly digital, but that doesn’t mean offline interaction is losing any of its power. In fact, your commitment to building real-world relationships with your customers and professional network will help you stand apart. So carve out time for some good old-fashioned face-to-face communication.