Get Passionate with Emotional Marketing

Just sit back for a moment and think about the most recent purchase you’ve just made.

Was the purchase done after a careful and thorough evaluation of the pros and cons of buying that item? Was there a deliberate and conscious cost-benefit analysis performed?

Or was it bought at the impulse or spark of the moment, triggered by an advertisement you’ve seen recently?

There’s a big chance that you’ve let the emotions driven by that ad get to you, like some invisible force gnawing at your core and saying – buy me, buy me, buy me.

While that may be an amusing way of describing consumer habits, actual reality might not seem too different from this at all. As a business coach, I’ve seen many professionals and entrepreneurs succumbing to the allure of emotion-driven purchases.

So, why not use the same emotional approach to your marketing as well?

There’s no doubt about it, emotions do hold a strong influence on how consumers make purchases and brand decisions. With their intent to buy, they rely more on their emotions, rather than consciously deliberating and thinking about it before making the purchase.

With billions of content posted on social media on a daily basis, hundreds of thousands of videos uploaded to YouTube at the same time, and not to mention the trillions of online ads displayed each year – it’s really hard and challenging to get through the cacophony and reach your audience.

Unless you hit them hard and get their attention – with their emotions.


Let’s Get Emotional with Statistics

Why do people respond to their emotions first before they can even think about it? It can be attributed to the way our brains function.

Hey, I’m a business consultant and not a brain doctor, so I’m really not an authority here, but I do know that scientists have already proven that our brain’s emotional section can process sensory information five times faster than the cognitive section, or the thinking part of the brain.

A faster emotional response to a product or brand is one thing, but getting a positive association from that emotional response will increase the likelihood of consumers trusting that brand by 8.4 times. According to Nielsen, ads that can trigger such an emotional response can increase sales by up to 23%.

Wow! That’s simply not a solely emotional matter.   

Let’s Get Clients Emotionally Connected

As a business strategy consultant, I know the importance businesses place on customers who have an emotional connection to their brand. It is an absolutely powerful and effective marketing strategy that can have a direct positive impact on your bottom line.

Why? Because a customer who is emotionally connected to a brand will definitely trust the brand more, enough for him to make regular, or even more purchases.  

A recent study conducted by the Harvard Business Review states that in order to get higher customer value, mere customer satisfaction is not enough. Businesses need to dive deeper into their customers’ fundamental motivations by connecting with them at an emotional level.

Satisfying their needs at the emotional level will push the customer experience way up the charts. As a business coach, I know that this can increase your value to the customer, eventually steering your business in the right financially-rewarding direction.

The success of Apple can be attributed to their expertise in utilising human emotions. Taking their advanced, cutting-edge technology aside, this company knows that the consumer wanted to become part of something bigger than themselves – they wanted to become part of a lifestyle movement.


Let’s Get Emotional… With Feelings

The Institute of Neuroscience and Psychology published in recent research that human emotions can be summed up into four basic categories: happiness, sadness, fear (surprise) and anger (disgust).

Emotional marketing can use these four basic emotions to drive connection to consumers and create awareness for their brand.

1) Happiness

The power of positivity is contagious as it is deeply rooted in man’s emotional need to be happy. It’s no wonder why happy and positive content is shared more and more often in social media, than negative, depressing ones. Emotional Marketing that triggers the same happy responses from targeted consumers will definitely have the same positive impact.  

2) Sadness

Telenovelas and emotional movies still have a phenomenal following and advertising agencies are capitalising on this intrinsic human emotional response. Those emotionally-charged Jollibee commercials from the Philippines broke the internet and had people crying over tear-jerking viral videos – from a fast-food chain.

The Thais capitalise on the same cry-mongering viral video formula as well, with super-sad commercials that will make you cry non-stop. But hey, they work!


3) Fear / Surprise

Fear is a natural human reaction to a stimulus that is perceived by the mind as a threat to survival. Fear, as used in marketing and advertising, has the intent of making people take action, or stop them from doing something that will not be good for them.

Scare tactics in advertising is not new to the Australian scene. Take the “Every cigarette is doing you damage” national media campaign back in the 1990s who did a great job in curbing smoking rates. However, the fear approach can be risky as it can result in a public backlash, like the depressing Nationwide insurance Super Bowl commercial, causing the company’s CMO to resign months later.

Like fear, anger is another natural human emotion that if used in emotional marketing effectively, can wake people up and motivate them to take an intended action. Viral videos and advertisements that have anger or disgust in its central theme, have proven to be very effective in conveying intended messages and grabbing attention if they were delivered with elements of surprise.  

Emotional marketing leverages on the power of emotions and the impact they carry on people’s lives. Humans are not robots devoid of any emotions. We live with our emotions on a daily basis and people are used to embracing such emotions in every aspect of their lives.

It’s time to rethink your marketing strategies, particularly if you feel that you’re getting minimal or no traction with your current campaigns. It might be high time to take the emotional route.

Let’s get emotional.