Empathy in Marketing: Why It Works and How to Build It In
A UK guide to compassionate content strategy for charities, education providers, and purpose-led brands that want to connect, not just convert.
The Case for Compassion: Empathy as a Strategic Advantage
When your organisation operates with sensitive topics, such as trauma, safeguarding, education, or poverty, the audience’s emotional safety matters just as much as your key message. People need to feel that they’re not being used, tokenised, or sold to. They need to see themselves represented with dignity.
That sounds very emotionally charged though, right? So, here’s some data to back it up:
- According to TTMC’s UK campaign data, purpose-led campaigns that led with compassion and clear alignment with audience values saw 46% higher engagement compared to generic or overly promotional messaging.
- Research from Charity Digital found that when charities integrated audience feedback loops and inclusive storytelling, supporter retention increased significantly.
- The Effie UK Report also noted that “empathetic resonance” was the strongest shared quality among campaigns that built long-term loyalty and multi-year funding partnerships.
The bottom line? Empathy works. It invites, rather than interrupts. It’s about insight over performance.
Signs Your Brand Messaging Lacks Empathy
Empathy starts with awareness, and sometimes, what’s missing from your messaging says more than what’s included. Before you build it in, let’s audit what might be missing. Does your brand communication…
- Use corporate speak or jargon that excludes everyday audiences?
- Talk more about “outputs” than “people”?
- Skip over the why in favour of just what you do?
- Highlight trauma without giving context, hope, or resolution?
- Feel distant, templated, or “PR safe”?
If you said “yes” to more than one, your marketing may be factually correct, but emotionally disconnected. That could be potentially costing you trust, visibility, and meaningful engagement.
What Empathy in Marketing Looks Like
Here are five core principles of empathetic content strategy, especially for UK charities and youth-focused organisations:
1. Lead with Listening
Empathy starts with audience insight. Use feedback forms, surveys, or even Instagram story polls to ask:
- What are people struggling with?
- What do they wish someone would say?
- What do they need to hear, not just what you need to say?
Power to Change has demonstrated a commitment to community voice by featuring resident-led stories and insights across their reports and campaigns, a powerful example of empathy-led communication in practice.
2. Use Real Stories With Real Consent
Case studies, interviews, lived experience quotes, these aren’t marketing add-ons, they’re core ingredients.
But: always ensure you get informed consent, otherwise anonymise if necessary, and make sure the person comes before the message.
Example:
When Anna Malik, founder of a trauma-informed coaching service, began sharing short-form reflections on LinkedIn about the why behind her work, not just the what, her engagement grew by over 130% in a single quarter.
Each post featured lived insight from her own founder journey: navigating burnout, building trust with survivors, and reshaping the coaching industry’s language around healing.
She made sure every story honoured the dignity of those she supported, and never shared client details without full consent. The result? A stronger brand voice, increased referrals, and several new commissioning conversations sparked by meaningful, values-led visibility.
3. Balance Emotion With Evidence
Empathy doesn’t mean being vague or overly sentimental. Pair human stories with outcomes, data, and policy relevance.
→ “Here’s how we helped a young person feel safe” should also include:
→ “...and here’s the safeguarding framework that made it possible.”
This not only deepens credibility, it shows that your emotional resonance is backed by real action.
4. Ditch the Growth-Hacks
As covered in our recent Authentic Growth: Ethical Social Media for Purpose‑Led Brands blog, purpose-led brands must resist the temptation of engagement bait or “fast follower” tactics. Empathy means building relationships, not gaming algorithms.
That means you need to ensure you avoid:
- Sensational headlines
- Uncontextualized trauma
- Clickbait urgency (“You won’t believe what happened…”)
If it wouldn’t sit well in a room with the people you serve, it doesn’t belong on your feed.
5. Build Empathy Into the Strategy Too
Tone and language in your copy matter, but so do platform choices, post types, visual design, and publishing cadence. An empathetic strategy will:
- Use inclusive visuals (real people, not token stock)
- Caption all videos and consider neurodivergent-friendly layouts
- Prioritise depth over volume, so one high-quality post over five filler ones
Empathy is care across the journey, not just the call-to-action.
How to Audit Your Messaging for Empathy
Before you can build more empathy into your marketing, you need to understand where it might be missing. This quick audit helps you examine whether your tone, storytelling, visuals, and calls to action are landing with connection or unintentionally creating distance. Use it to refine how your purpose-led brand shows up in the digital space. Here are some audit questions:
- Tone of Voice
Does it feel human and conversational?
- Storytelling
Is the narrative people-first, or mission-first only?
- Visual Language
Are images inclusive, real, and accessible?
- CTA
Are you inviting people into the community or asking them to act from guilt/fear?
- Feedback
Do you ask for and act on comments, questions, or replies?
Empathy isn’t a guess, it’s a practice. When you audit regularly, you create space for your audience to feel seen, not just targeted. That’s how trust grows, and trust is what turns followers into believers.
Case Study: Fledge Tuition
After refining their brand voice to include softer, more accessible language and emphasising student voices, Fledge Tuition saw a 9987% increase in LinkedIn reach in August alone. Their posts moved from “here’s what we do” to “here’s how our students experience change.”
That shift? Empathy, embedded in every asset.
Empathy Converts Because It Cares
Empathy is not a trend, it’s a long-term trust builder. And in the world of purpose-led marketing, trust is the most valuable currency.
When audiences feel understood, they engage and they commit. When your organisation shows up with clarity, compassion, and courage, your message reaches and resonates.
Ready to Put Empathy at the Heart of Your Content?
At Louise Marketing, we specialise in ethical digital marketing for UK-based, purpose-driven brands. From safeguarding-sensitive storytelling to strategic campaign planning, we help you connect without compromising.
Let’s build a content strategy that leads with empathy and lands with impact.
