Marketing is about much more than just advertising and selling your product or service. Where the goal of advertising (which is an important subset of marketing) is to promote specific product awareness and encourage purchasing, marketing is a more complex, ongoing process of:
- Identifying, predicting, and fulfilling consumer needs
- Identifying and understanding your target customer/audience
- driving awareness of your brand and offering/s
- ensuring your offering stands out and is compelling to your target
- acquiring and retaining customers
There is an array of ways to fulfil these needs, and a comprehensive marketing strategy will not look the same for all businesses. Depending on your brand, your offering, your target consumers, and other factors, your marketing strategy could incorporate a diverse range of activities including (but not limited to) branding, Paid Ads, Social Media Ads, website redesign, search engine optimisation, content marketing, email marketing, video marketing, influencer marketing, organic social media marketing, and much more.
Infusing your marketing campaigns with features to connect with your target audience’s emotions and drive an emotional response is a powerful strategy that can deliver big results – helping your brand forge stronger connections and drive brand loyalty.
This is known as emotional marketing.
What is Emotional Marketing?
Emotional marketing refers to the deliberate practice of influencing target audiences by using persuasive messages that tap into human emotion and generate a visceral response to a marketing campaign. This will, ideally, drive consumers to choose your brand, purchase your offering, or otherwise act in the way you seek.
Not only the purview of retailers, it is also successfully employed by non-profits and charities, government and service agencies, insurance companies, political interests, and many others.
Most emotional marketing campaigns strive to trigger widespread feelings of happiness, sadness, or anger – though a myriad of emotional responses may be targeted, from pride to fear, shame, inspiration, motivation, belonging, and many others.
Countless brands actively avail emotional marketing to compel their audiences to connect and convert – and there is no more powerful, successful way to drive action and create lasting connections.
Why Use Emotional Marketing?
Emotional marketing is not new. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle identified three main techniques to appeal to and persuade others:
- Logos – “logic”, based on facts and figures
- Ethos – “ethics”, based on credibility and authority
- Pathos – “emotion”, based on emotional triggers and responses
Did you know that people rely on emotions to make decisions far more than they do raw information?
Emotion is used by marketers as a bridge between brands and consumers. This elicits a deeper connection than other forms of marketing and a better overall return on investment (ROI).
According to a Nielson study[1], ad campaigns with an emotional marketing focus drive an increase in sales of 23% more than other marketing strategies.
Beyond simply marketing in terms of the brand and its offering, a lot of brands align themselves with a particular stance (dependent upon the target market) on relevant trends, current affairs, etc (e.g., sustainability, Ukraine, The Voice, animal welfare, natural disasters, etc) – this tactic can be either incredibly successful or detrimental to brands, depending on how it is executed and received by target audiences.
Executed well, emotional marketing can offer distinct advantages for your brand and business:
- Make a great first impression
- Drive brand loyalty
- Trigger memories and feelings of nostalgia
- Influence purchasing decisions
- Trigger impulse-buying
- Boost the shareability of content
- Inspire and motivate audiences to “think” with their heart rather than their head
- Elicit a specific response – your audience will ideally take note, remember, share, and buy or otherwise act (sign up, participate, vote, support, etc)
How to Identify Your Audience’s Emotions
How does your audience feel?
There is a spectrum of human emotions – happiness, sadness, anger, excitement, surprise, disgust, dismay, embarrassment, fear, heartbreak, pride, guilt, joy, contentment, optimism, love, hate…
Whichever emotion we’re talking about, people feel. You need to identify who your target audience is, and what you want them to feel when they think about your brand, product, and campaign. You must then ensure that these all align. This will inform everything from your website design to content and tone, graphics, fonts, adverts, and everything else you create.
The type of emotion your marketing triggers encourages specific actions over and above buying. When targeted for the right audience, for example:
- Happiness triggers sharing
- Sadness triggers empathy, connection, and giving
- Fear and surprise trigger a need for comfort, stability, and security
- Passion and anger trigger wilfulness, sharing, and viral content
The Role Storytelling Plays
Storytelling is intrinsic to marketing, no more so than for emotive marketing. Stories should be relatable and shareable and composed to resonate with your target audience to elicit excitement, sadness, anger, caring, gratitude, passion, or any other emotion that suits your campaign message.
Tips for Crafting Emotive Content
Know Who Your Audience Is – what matters to them, what they believe, what kind of content resonates with them, and what will trigger the emotional response you seek.
Consider Colour – from your logo to your website colour scheme, colour matters in every aspect of your branding – and it also has a potent influence on evoking emotion. Many businesses and other organisations use “colour psychology” – think about how brands targeted for parents of infants use soft hues; childcare centres use vibrant, fun colours; hospitals use calming colours…
- Red equates to passion, anger, excitement, danger, power, and love
- Orange is associated with joy and friendship
- Yellow evokes happiness, energy, and intellect
- Green is the colour of nature, harmony, growth, fertility, and freshness
- Blue signifies depth, calmness, stability, confidence, wisdom, truth and loyalty
- Purple is associated with royalty, power, luxury, and ambition
- Black signifies elegance, formality, mystery, and power
- White is “clean” and evokes light, purity, innocence, goodness, faith, safety, and freshness
Establish a Community – a type of “bandwagon” effect, this is a way to bring likeminded people together with your brand and maintain interest through feelings of excitement, belonging, and camaraderie – and it’s also a dynamic way to foster ongoing trust and loyalty for your brand and create brand advocates. Social media marketing is a fantastic way to promote and foster community spirit, attracting new members to your “community”, and generating and converting leads in an incredibly effective way.
- Image is Key – project an ideal image and show consumers through your marketing not only why your offering is the best solution for them, but also how they will feel by choosing it.
- Aspiration – target consumers’ dreams, visions, and goals in your marketing. Hope is influential and when you demonstrate how your brand, product, or service can help consumers achieve their desires, they will feel excited to get on board with you.
- Authenticity – in everything you do, you must remain authentic. You need to align every marketing campaign and emotional drive with your brand’s core values.
Deepen Your Audience Connections with Dot-to-Dot Digital
Emotions play a major role in consumer attention spans and buying decisions. Incorporating emotional marketing into your campaign strategy could reap enormous rewards for your business. Make your audience think and feel and exploit their emotional response. From fear (including the fear of missing out) to anger, happiness, sadness, guilt, belonging, greed, and more, the right approach can be a game-changer for your brand.
Dot-to-Dot Digital is here to help.
An expert team of experienced digital strategists, Dot-to-Dot Digital offers an array of creative digital marketing solutions that elicit real results for brands and businesses across a diverse array of industries and sectors in Australia.
Book a digital strategy session with us today to explore how we can help you design and implement a unique emotional marketing strategy to help boost your brand and business outcomes.
[1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2018/02/26/lets-get-emotional-the-future-of-online-marketing/#320c5ed94d0c
