The power of emotional marketing

Taking full advantage of human emotions online –Ethically

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People believe that the choices they make are based on carefully breaking down the available options or alternatives.

What’s the mystic force that drives the decisions we make when we make a purchase? Study after study has proven that when we buy, it’s for emotional reasons. Consumers think with both their rational and emotional brains and logic comes into play when we try and justify the money that we have or are about to spend. Our rational and emotional brain is simply wired to function that way, it’s what makes us human.

That’s why emotional marketing is so effective. However, today’s consumers are better educated, and better equipped to research what they do not already know. The golden question is How do you stay relevant in a very competitive environment? Here’s how: By tapping into another major component of the consumer’s attention span, purchase decision and emotion.

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We’ll be exploring emotional marketing in this article and highlight why it’s such a powerful force behind buying behaviour. By leveraging this information you’ll find methods to better connect with your audience and entice them to act!

“No matter how much you like to think of yourself as a logical or rational person – humans are slaves to emotions” - Unknown

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What is Emotional Marketing?

Emotional marketing refers to marketing efforts that primarily use emotions to make the audience notice, remember, share and buy. Emotional marketing typically taps into emotions such as happiness, sadness, frustration to prompt a consumer response.

Human emotions are like colours, there are a few defined concepts but for the most part, emotions exist on a spectrum. One tiny change in the spectrum can lead to different kinds of emotions.

Depending on your industry, product or audience, you can’t always target “general happiness” You need to precisely define what emotions you’re planning on targeting. This will influence the details of your marketing such as your copywriting, media, graphics choices, and help it be as effective as possible.

For your emotional marketing strategy to work, it must be authentic and honest. You need to truly understand both the audience and the brand’s identity to choose the right approach.

Why emotional marketing works

We as humans, cannot help but experience all kinds of emotions. It’s in our nature. That’s why emotional marketing is so effective. When it comes to marketing, emotional campaigns prove to be a secret weapon for getting into the hearts and minds of prospective customers.

Below are a few other reasons as to why Emotional Marketing works:

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Scientists have found that positive emotions are more likely to convince us to share, tag our friends or retweet something, than negative emotions.

This means that marketers can improve their brand reach simply by highlighting positive content or using words that appeal to the “happy” part of the brain, such as:

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• Delighted
• Ecstatic
• Satisfied
• Cheerful
• Elated

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Sadness = More Clicks

Research has found that words with negative connotations lead to higher click-through rates an Outbrain study found that negative words like “worst” or “never”, work 30% more than a headline without a superlative when it comes to grabbing attention.

It was also found that negative words had a 63% higher click-through rate than their positive counterparts. What’s more, positive words such as “best” were significantly less appealing to audience members.

Which emotion works?

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If you have a look in any dictionary or thesaurus, you’ll find hundreds of words that describe our different emotions that we experience every day. Such as surprise, excitement, empathy. So how do you know which emotions to use in your strategy around those feelings?

And how do you combine all of those elements into an effective emotional marketing strategy?

The good news is that it’s simpler than you think

In 2014 the institute of Neuroscience and Psychology found that all human emotions are based on our four feelings. Happiness, Sadness, Fear/Surprise and Anger/disgust with those four options in mind, let’s take a look at how you can use emotional appeal in your marketing campaigns to drive the results you want.

Happiness

Every single brand want’s its products to be associated with happy, smiling customers. As mentioned above, positivity has a knack for increasing engagement and shares.

A study conducted in 2010 covering the most-emailed New York Times articles, discovered that emotional articles received the most shares, and positive posts got more attention than negative ones.

Sadness

If all brands want their customers happy and smiling why bother with other emotions? Well, the simple answer is that different emotions drive different results. Only in recent years have companies realized the value of emotional marketing to provoke a type of emotion that drives a certain result.

If you provoke sadness in your customer base and promise them that you have the solution to do something about their negative feelings, they are more likely to act.

Fear/Surprise

Fear is what keeps us alive, it’s in our instinct and something that we all experience from time to time. In the world of emotional marketing, fear prompts people to act through urgency and a desire for self-preservation.

For marketing agencies or professionals, fear proves to be a far more complex emotion to work with than sadness or happiness. If fear is overwhelmingly present in your campaign it might anger your audience, if not used correctly.

Anger/Disgust

While most companies assume that it’s best to avoid angering their customers, this negative emotion can have a powerful impact in the right circumstances. Emotional marketing strategies that use feelings of anger and disgust can shake people out of their stupor and into action.

When we see an injustice in the world that we want to change, we’re driven to do something about it.

5 Emotional Marketing Approaches

For the emotional marketing strategy to work effectively, the campaigns need to feel authentic and honest. Marketers need to truly understand both the audience and the brand’s identity to select the best approach.

Here are five approaches to emotional marketing that can turn casual consumers into brand fans: Inspirational, Aspirational, Love, Milestones and Local.

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1. Inspirational

When people are inspired they often think and act differently. That’s why it’s so important to understand what drives and motivates your audience. The right human interest story who embodies the brand makes the inspirational approach work.

Effectively associating your brand with a role model that people can believe in may lead people to believe in your product as well. Nike has mastered the inspirational approach, using athletes like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan as brand ambassadors who inspire audiences not simply with their looks or fame but with their accomplishments, talents, and perseverance.

Building an emotional connection with your customers can be magical and create a halo effect for your brand.

2. Aspirational

Aspirational campaigns create a brand presence that taps into their audience's dreams, their desires to reach their goals and aspirations of a lifestyle or experience they long for. They may aspire to be financially secure, send a child to university or hit the open road in a status vehicle.

Marketers considering an aspirational approach must understand the need, hope or desire their brand fills for their target customers and how their brand reflects people’s self-image and identity. Then they must build a story that brings the dream to life.

3. Expressing Love

A marketing strategy focused on appealing to consumers' raw and most personal emotions can change a nameless or faceless business into a brand that audiences can relate to and care about. This can even work for businesses that aren’t inherently compelling or deliver a product or service that has little to differentiate it from the competition.

It is also impactful for businesses that specialize in products or services for special occasions. The best way to humanize a brand is by demonstrating that the brand makes someone’s life better, easier or brings joy to them.

4. Milestone – connection

Milestones can be an opportunity to strengthen your brand’s relationship with your customers. Additionally, a brand can focus on life milestones that are important to its audience and develop a strategy that resonates with them.

Even just creating a story about your brand’s presence in the lives of those experiencing a milestone can be very effective for your brand.

5. The Local angle

A brand can gain fans by connecting to people’s pride and passion for where they live. Brands with a trendy “buy local” strategy tailor their stories and platforms to the cities in which they do business. National brands, retailers, and banks tie into their local markets through campaigns featuring famous local attractions, local schools and universities, and hometown sports teams.

Location-specific marketing is also a particularly valuable approach for young, smaller businesses or franchises that may have smaller budgets, but can trade on their local presence and connection to the community.

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As customers become more focused on the importance of relationships in their buying decisions, people from all backgrounds have begun to align themselves with the brands that reflect their values and speak to their emotions. If you can add emotional marketing campaigns to your strategy, you could benefit from bigger profits, stronger revenues, and happier long-term customers.

Think of emotional marketing as the secret weapon that you never knew you had. By weaving emotions into your marketing message is a surefire way to attract, resonate with, and encourage your audience to act.

You need to know your audience and fully understand their driving factors to put emotions into your marketing campaigns. Align these with your overall marketing goals, and your emotional marketing efforts will be some of your most effective.

Now that you have a better understanding of how emotional marketing works and why an emotional marketing strategy is essential for your business, you can start planning your digital marketing campaign. You’ve got many different tactics at your disposal to help you create a marketing campaign with the precision that can effectively drive results.

Still not sure what to do next? Our team at Best Web Design would love to help you. Our team of professional experts can help your business stay relevant in a very competitive market place by helping you create a sound digital marketing strategy. We’ll create and implement a digital strategy that’s focused on helping your business grow and reach qualified leads to boost your conversion rate.

Contact us now to find out how our team can help you take your company’s digital marketing to the next level.

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