\\ The Power of Emotional Marketing Online
In all walks of life, human beings possess different feelings and are slaves to their emotions. Being able to tap into the emotional side of marketing can help to improve your marketing and brand.
Regardless of the number of times you tell yourself that you’ll sleep on it or weigh up the pro’s & con’s, the truth is that the majority of your decisions are made based on how you feel at the time. Humans think second and feel first – emotional marketing tells a story that connects audiences with brands in a personal, and human way.
As new media channels, devices, and platforms emerge, they ensure that people have plenty of access to brand stories. What’s more, there are now a host of ways for companies to convey their identity and vision, making emotional marketing much simpler.
When used correctly, emotional marketing strategies can help companies to differentiate themselves in not only a busy market, but a challenging market too by bringing the passion and focus to a corporate entity.
What is emotional marketing?
The role of your buyers feelings play into their decisions, and this is something marketers cannot afford to ignore. In a fast-paced world, organisations need to make sure that they’re appealing to their buyer persona’s wants and needs before anything else when developing marketing campaigns.
You’ve got growth goals? We’ll build the roadmap.
Businesses need a data-driven vision. More importantly, they need a clear, action-packed game plan. We partner with you to strategize, prioritize, link up cross-channel insights, and, ultimately, grow.
Which emotions work across marketing campaigns?
So, how can you make sure you’re building your emotional marketing strategies around the right feelings?
One great place to start is a thesaurus – you’ll be able to expose several words describing the different emotions we experience each day. The next challenge is combining and portraying surprise, excitement, apathy and even overwhelm in your messaging getting to that optimal emotional marketing campaign.
Emotion is broken down into 4 categories: happiness, fear/surprise, anger/disgust and sadness. With this, you can now look deeper at your messaging and creative to appeal to those categories.
Happiness
This is the number 1 focus for any brand – all companies want their brands to be associated with happy, smiling customers! If you are positive, you will see a knock on effect in increasing engagement and shares.
Sadness
Portraying sadness does not mean you will lose customers, companies have begun to recognise the value of using emotional content to tug at the heartstrings of their customers.
If you make your customers feel sad, and then promise them that you have the solution to do something about their negative feelings, you can rest assured that they’ll be more likely to interact and buy what you are offering.
Fear & Surprise
We all possess fear, it is a natural human instinct, and something we all feel at times. Whether it is heights or worrying about the world we live in today, fear comes in all shapes and sizes! In the world of emotional marketing campaigns, fear prompts people to act through urgency and a desire for self-preservation.
Anger & Disgust
While most companies assume that it’s best to avoid angering their customers, this negative emotion can have a powerful impact when used correctly in the right circumstances.
Emotional marketing strategies that use feelings of anger and disgust can make people get out of their comfort zone, think and jump into action. When we see an injustice in the world that we all want to force change and make a better place to live!
You’ve got growth goals? We’ll build the roadmap.
Businesses need a data-driven vision. More importantly, they need a clear, action-packed game plan. We partner with you to strategize, prioritize, link up cross-channel insights, and, ultimately, grow.
Tips to improve your emotional strategy
Now that we’ve discussed the emotions we all feel, how do we go about integrating those into our marketing?
With emotional marketing strategies, brands and advertising companies can use the power of emotions to develop stronger connections between companies and their customers.
We have a few ways that you can use your emotional marketing to make an impact on your audience.
1. Create a sense of urgency
Emotional marketing doesn’t have to be all about making your customers feel good inside, sometimes it can be about pushing them to do something, with feelings of anxiety, fear, and urgency.
One example is when you give people too much time to decide, you can rest assured that they’ll postpone until they forget about your product or offer entirely.
By giving your potential customer a limited-time offer, you push them to engage, and reduce your risk of losing the sale, thanks to “FOMO”. Nobody wants to miss out on something great. That’s why fear is one of the most powerful components of emotional marketing.
2. Build trust by collecting user generated content
A great way to make your customer or client feel happy is with user generated content in your marketing campaigns. We all look for signs that we can trust a company, and the products or services you’re selling.
With user generated content like reviews and testimonials, you can really engage and build a stronger sense of belonging in your followers, which prompts feelings of loyalty and affinity. We all live in a world where people search for support from their peers and this sense of belonging can be incredibly powerful.
3. Surprise and delight your audience
Consumers are likely to use their own emotions rather than information provided when they’re evaluating your brand. This means that if you really want to capture your audience’s attention, you need to do something to catch their eyes and get their brains engaged. Surprising your audience with a unique and emotional campaign is a great way to engage your customers and keep your company top of mind.
The best way to surprise your audience in a positive way is to get to know them and figure out what matters to them. A good example of this could be for a fitness brand looking to help those in need of improving their health & wellness goals. Rather than the monotonous counting of calories, surprise you customer with health alternatives to the foods we love!
4. Make campaigns nostalgic
As the world becomes more technology-focused, many of us are looking back fondly at the days when things were simpler. This opens up a world of opportunities for companies who know how to embrace feelings of nostalgia in their campaigns.
Is it worth investing in emotional marketing strategies?
You are likely already portraying emotional marketing across your campaigns already. If you want to appeal to your audience, then you’ll need to find ways of reaching out to the part of the brain that thrives on emotions and gut instincts.
If it wasn’t for the emotional appeal in marketing today, we’d all have a much harder time making purchasing decisions – regardless of what we are buying!
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 personal values and speak to their emotions.
If you are able to embed more emotion into your marketing campaigns across your strategy, you could benefit from bigger profits, stronger revenues, and happier long-term customers!
You’ve got growth goals? We’ll build the roadmap.
Businesses need a data-driven vision. More importantly, they need a clear, action-packed game plan. We partner with you to strategize, prioritize, link up cross-channel insights, and, ultimately, grow.