Humans are complex creatures. Striking a chord with your target audience is an easy way to push them down the sales funnel. There is a myriad of emotions that can be infused into your marketing strategy. Some commonly used emotions are fear, happiness, sense of belonging, anger, exclusivity etc. However, be mindful of how eliciting specific emotions at various moments might have a long-term impact, since humans hold on to some emotions for longer than others. Negative emotions need more thought and that information is absorbed more fully than good emotions. As a result, we are more likely to obsess over painful situations and use harsher words to describe them than positive occurrences.
Sometimes, people cannot identify their pain points clearly. With emotional marketing, a brand can drive into prospects subconscious how terrible their pain point is. This leaves them thinking of probable solutions, and leave them wanting to connect with how your brand fixes that pain point.
This may sound obvious, but here’s the kicker: Emotions outlive our brain’s ability to recall content—how we felt after an experience will linger long after rational knowledge has been forgotten.
People will buy anything based on their sentiments, according to studies, and then use logic to rationalize the purchase. “People don’t purchase what you do; they buy why you do it,” says Simon Sinek.
WHEEL OF EMOTIONS
Here are factors to consider in making your customer experience more emotionally appealing:
- The Power of Storytelling as an Art:
If you are a fan of Netflix who has watched Money Heist, you might have noticed how the movie made a lot of its audience root for robbers. One of the reasons this movie sells is because of how well the writers utilized the number one marketing trigger- The Human Emotion. It is an easy way to help your prospects connect with your brand. The emotional trigger in season one makes you anticipate season two. It works exactly that way in marketing as emotions help you maintain customer loyalty. Nobody wants to go through long technical blogs to find out what your product or service can accomplish for them, despite the fact that content is king. Sharing your successes through tales – such as case studies on how your product or service has addressed real issues for real people – is one method to appeal to your customers’ emotional side. Your story must be in sync across all channels. The content of your email, your SMS campaign or social media adverts should stir the same emotion. Project a brand story your audience wants to connect with.
- Personalization:
Personalization is more important than you think- this is why trigger-based emails work; your audience can connect easily to the brand because you send email content based on their actions. Personalization can be as simple as adding your receiver’s first name to the mail content or even in the subject line. However, avoid overusing click baits. If the content doesn’t meet the recipients’ expectations, you might be losing their trust gradually.
- Customer service communication that works
SMS/MMS Chatbot is a useful channel for customer support. With SMS Chatbot, for instance, it is important to program the bot logic to have a touch of human emotions and not sound robotic.
- Colour
Colour Psychology is a real thing. It is why staying in the dark or a bright room affects your mood. In designing your landing pages, it is imperative you use colours that align with the emotions you are trying to stir up in your audience. Colors contain properties that might lead individuals to feel particular emotions. Within seconds or minutes, people create subconscious judgements on a person, surroundings, or product. This first impression is influenced by colour.
Brands and advertising are well aware of this reality. They understand that specific colours, tints, hues, and tones elicit emotion and motivate people to take action. This is a subtle yet effective effect.
- Listen
Make it a priority to listen to your consumers and demonstrate that you are ‘listening’ by acting on their input to make them feel appreciated. This leads us back to the recruiting and training of your client-facing employees, who must exercise extraordinary patience while dealing with consumer complaints either online or offline. Instead of repeating a repetitive script about your product or service to everyone, it’s important to take the time to discover what a prospect or client genuinely wants and provide them with a solution.
Humans have an innate desire to belong, to feel valued and needed by others. Emotions play a huge role in our personal connections, such as the enjoyment and sense of inclusion. Listening to customer feedback helps them feel valued and a part of your decision making process. Your eagerness to solve a customer’s issue can be sensed through the tone of your messages.
- Reward
Everyone likes to know they are doing a good job. Make your consumers feel valued every time they connect with you by thanking them for their business and loyalty to your company. This can be a part of your post-purchase campaign.
Exclusive offers like coupons are a form of personalization that customers enjoy.
- Start a movement and drive community engagement
Everyone knows the damage plastic does to the environment. It is common to notice that companies who produce containers but support this movement have improved sales.
Tell stories of the movement you support- this will automatically drive engagement as people that care about that movement will choose you rather than competitors. You can drive community engagement on the movement by creating mail content that resonates with your audience. With attractive Call to actions (CTAs), you keep the conversation going and your brand top of mind of your audience.
People don’t only purchase because they can connect with a brand, they also tell other people. Word of mouth recommendations can go a long way in boosting your sales.
Like every marketing strategy, there should be metrics to measure its effectiveness. To measure the results of emotional marketing on your customer experience you might have to create a survey and also analyze before and after click-through-rates of email CTAs and purchases.
Brand loyalty isn’t dead, but blind loyalty is rare- This quote by Next scoop, holds so much water today
Coca-cola is selling happiness!
Nike is selling morale!
Asides from solving a problem, what is your emotional appeal?
