Marketing Through Emotion
Old-school, hard-sell ad strategies are over. People have become jaded toward obvious marketing ploys and are likely to ignore or delete blatant ad and marketing blasts. The new game in town is marketing through emotion. This type of strategy refrains from hitting people over the head and instead speaks to them through their hearts.
Creative marketing through emotion focuses on how your brand makes the client feel, not on the functions or features your products or services provide. Research published on the Claremont Colleges website takes Dove soap’s “Campaign for Real Beauty” as a prime example of making an emotional connection, specifically with women consumers.
Marketing materials for the campaign featured women of all shapes, sizes and ages in their underwear, proclaiming that all women are blessed with underlying beauty. Instead of focusing on the soap’s features, such as the ability to float or keep you clean, the campaign focused on how it made women feel: confident, powerful and beautiful.
Welcome to the land of creative emotional marketing.
Why It Works
Why such an interactive marketing strategy works is summed up neatly by Entrepreneur blogger Jim Joseph. He says:
“Customers don't necessarily remember what you do for them as much as they remember how you made them feel.”
All soaps can get you clean, for instance, but Dove soap, well, it makes you feel beautiful.
How to Do It
One of the keys to marketing through emotion noted by blogger Joseph is to focus on the underlying emotional benefits your products, services or brand can bring. Let’s say you’re a web designer why typically promotes your services by showcasing how groovy your web designs look.
Using the interactive marketing strategy that appeals to potential customer’s emotions can still give them a good look at your fabulous designs, but it can also go much deeper. First, set yourself apart from your bazillions of competitors by highlighting what makes you unique.
Ask yourself what customers get from you that they cannot get from any other web design service.
Go beyond the features and delve into the emotions. Do you leave each customer with a feeling of strong support, that you truly have their backs? Do you make them feel empowered by offering web design and maintenance lessons or tips? When they get off the phone with you, are they usually laughing due to your company’s fun-loving nature? Are they soothed, calmed and infused with feelings of relief?
Grab the emotions and run with them. Put the emotional appeal front and center in your next creative marketing campaign. No matter how groovy your web design may look on the screen, it can’t match the relief, serenity and joy that touch the customers’ hearts when you give them what they want and need.
If you're interested in other effective strategies to help set your brand apart from the rest, by marketing through emotion contact us today to learn more.
Ryn G is a freelance writer available on WriterAccess, a marketplace where clients and expert writers connect for assignments.
