Emotional Marketing

Grow Your Business with Emotional Marketing

Failing to make an emotional connection is one of the biggest mistakes a marketer can make. Ultimately, the marketer’s job is to persuade a consumer to make a buying decision – and while logic and reason do come into play, the emotional sell is far more important.

There are experts that believe 90% of all purchasing decisions are driven by subconscious factors. Put another way: 9/10 of your potential buyers will make their decision outside of logic. They’ll rely on their “gut” and follow their emotional drives.

So you can imagine the potential impact failing to make an emotional impact has on your bottom line.

Making your marketing more emotionally compelling

Marketing can be as complex or as simple as you’d like it to be. But in it’s simplest form, it comes down to understanding:

  • Your audience’s needs;
  • The emotional drivers behind those needs; and
  • Which emotional triggers will lead them to your product.

What makes it complex is the complexity of human emotion. Emotions are never straightforward, and every individual prospect has a completely unique emotional perspective.

Understanding this complexity, how do we appeal to the emotions of a group of strangers and lead them to our product? While you’ll never make everybody happy, you can optimise your messaging to create a measurably favourable response towards your brand.

Here are a few proven emotional boosters that can drive conversion, help tell your story and boost your bottom line:

Stimulating visuals

Humans have strong responses to visual stimuli. The things we see have the power to move us to tears, stop us in our tracks and in the most extreme cases, leave us with lifelong changes in perspective. Using powerful visuals in your marketing is a great way to create emotional response.

One of the most proven ways of engaging human emotions is to include images of people in your marketing. Human beings are tribal by nature – we respond to other people subconsciously (where 90% of purchasing decisions are made).

So if you know a bit about your audience, show them people that they’ll relate to experiencing the emotional resolution they crave through your product.

One example of this principle in action (and there are many) is Coca-Cola’s 2009 / 2010 summer beach ad, which you can check out here. The ad doesn’t mention thirst, ingredients, price or packaging once – it simply shows people having a fun time, linking their experience to the product.

Emotional language

Language is key in marketing. Even if you’re selling the same product to the same audience through the same funnel, simple changes in language can change conversion rates by staggering amounts.

It’s the marketer’s job to understand their audience’s pain points and desires. It’s also their job to understand how their audience describes these things. The goal is to bring the emotions your prospect already feels to the surface by using the right language.

For example, if you were marketing to young skaters, you might use the words “sick” and “wicked” in a positive light. Now, imagine using the same language trying to sell hearing aids to seniors.

Perhaps a humorous example, but it illustrates the point: Knowing how your audience talks about their pain and desires is critical. Nail the language, and you’ll be one step closer to nailing your marketing messaging.

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