Jonathan Bech­er, CMO of inter­na­tion­al soft­ware provider SAP, recent­ly revealed sev­en key take­aways for brands that want to cre­ate pow­er­ful con­nec­tions with their con­sumers. Here’s a recap of his insights from C2 Mon­tréal.

1. People Are Looking to Connect

We all want to con­nect. It’s a desire innate in all of us, and real­ly con­nect­ing with oth­ers has a pos­i­tive affect on the brain. Stud­ies show how we are “hard-wired” to seek out social con­nec­tions. Mak­ing such con­nec­tions is high­ly reward­ed by our brains: endor­phins are released, oxy­tocin lev­els increase, stress lev­els go down, and our mood lifts.

2. There’s a Difference Between the Quantity and Quality of Connections

Not every con­nec­tion is pow­er­ful. A shared lev­el of empa­thy and mutu­al emo­tion is need­ed. In a social busi­ness con­text, brands must reach out and show they care about their con­sumers. And it isn’t the case that we can’t cre­ate mean­ing­ful con­nec­tions remote­ly, or over long dis­tances. Let­ter writ­ing is a bit of a lost art, but for cen­turies it’s been a pow­er­ful enabler of human con­nec­tions. It can be slow, but there’s an art to writ­ing a good let­ter in order for mean­ing not to be lost even if it arrives a month lat­er.

3. Marketing is Both an Art and Science

This has been an oft-debat­ed top­ic, espe­cial­ly with the grow­ing influ­ence of data sci­ence on mar­ket­ing. The buzz-phrase being thrown around is that “Mad Men are becom­ing Math Men.” Ulti­mate­ly there are two ele­ments essen­tial to mar­ket­ing:

• Tap­ping into the human psy­che. This is the very heart of mar­ket­ing. Under­stand­ing an unmet need amongst a small group, and design­ing a prod­uct or ser­vice to ful­fill that need.
• Estab­lish­ing a pref­er­ence for a par­tic­u­lar prod­uct for a spe­cif­ic num­ber of peo­ple. Build­ing equi­ty and loy­al­ty for a brand.

4. Social is an Enabler, Not a Goal in Itself

Every depart­ment is sup­port­ed by social media. Whether it’s sales, devel­op­ment, sup­port, or mar­ket­ing, social can help achieve those goals.

5. Build a Network and Put It to Work

You can use the pow­er of con­nec­tions to build your own net­work. The SAP com­mu­ni­ty net­work num­bers 2 mil­lion mem­bers mak­ing tens of mil­lions of con­nec­tions. It’s been a great forum for ideas. SAP recent­ly launched Ideaplace, which is designed to crowd­source SAP tech­nol­o­gy, bring­ing atten­tion to fea­tures that are being talked about direct­ly from the crowd. You can go one step fur­ther and start out­sourc­ing the devel­op­ment too, giv­ing away the intel­lec­tu­al prop­er­ty to third par­ties so they can kick off devel­op­ment and improve the vari­ety of the ecosys­tem.

6. Integrate Analytics With Accessible Media to Tap Into People’s Emotions

Ana­lyt­ics can tell you what your audi­ence is inter­est­ed in. That’s incred­i­bly pow­er­ful for engage­ment, as it gives you a route through to peo­ple’s pas­sions and emo­tions. For exam­ple, noth­ing stirs up peo­ple’s emo­tions like sports. SAP worked on nba.com/stats and pro­vid­ed an inte­grat­ed ana­lyt­ics suite, with video high­lights, where users could build cus­tom sta­tis­tics about the NBA. Reach­ing out and engag­ing peo­ple in what they are pas­sion­ate about can make even the most bor­ing com­pa­ny more inter­est­ing.

7. Connections Are the Ultimate Form of Human Communication

For busi­ness­es today, it’s about going back to the heart of mar­ket­ing. Real­ly under­stand­ing what your con­sumers need, and what will make their lives eas­i­er, and then com­mu­ni­cat­ing that with them in a way that is as pow­er­ful and rel­e­vant as pos­si­ble. If you can do that, you’ve made a qual­i­ty con­nec­tion. You can watch Becher’s excel­lent pre­sen­ta­tion below: