Have you ever watched an ad on television that made you laugh out loud, put a lump in your throat, or otherwise warmed your heart? Most of us can name at least one in each of these categories, further backing up all of the research which has confirmed that one of the best ways to connect with your consumers is emotionally.
The question is: How do you create a marketing campaign that creates this much of an emotional punch, causing your ideal customer to come walking in your door? The answer lies in doing some very basic things which revolve around using human psychology to your advantage.
Put Yourself In Your Consumer’s Shoes
If you offer a product or service that you have searched for yourself prior to making and selling it, it’s always beneficial to put yourself back in the shoes of your consumers and think back to the emotions that were most important when you were making your brand selection. Why did you choose one over the other? Specifically, what emotions did it elicit inside of you, making it your final choice?
In cases where you’ve not had to shop for your products or services yourself, what does your market research tell you about your ideal consumer? What kind of feedback have they provided on your website, in person, or via social media that you can use to help you create that strong, emotionally binding connection?
Appeal to Their Pain Points
A large number of small businesses are created in response to a need, as a solution to a problem. By helping your consumer connect with the feelings that this particular problem creates via your emotional marketing efforts, you can effectively use their pain points to make them feel closer to your brand.
For example, if you sell coffee, how about creating a marketing campaign about how tired you are when you get up in the morning or how you don’t have the energy to power through your workouts with a little bit of caffeine? And if your service is tree trimming, what about appealing to your potential customers’ fear of dead limbs falling on their treasured homes or cars?
(If you’d like more examples of using pain to emotionally connect with your consumer, The Warc Blog has an article titled 10 brands addressing consumer pain points which offers many of them.)
Share How You Can Improve Their Lives
Another emotional marketing option is to take the opposite approach and create advertising that helps your consumer realize and connect with the idea that you can make their lives better, happier, more fulfilled, or more gratifying. In other words, instead of pointing out how you can help them avoid the negatives in life (pain), you can highlight the positive results of using your brand instead by reinforcing the pleasure you can provide.
One study published in Open Food Science Journal on bottled water shows this principle very well. Specifically, it found a greater market for companies who offered “bottled water containing strong health benefits.” In essence, by getting their target market to connect with feelings of greater health when drinking their brand, they could likely have a bigger impact.
Let’s say that your small business manufactures and sells windshield wipers. A good way to market this product emotionally might be to point out how much better you feel when you can actually see where it is you’re going by using high quality wipers. One option for doing this would be to create a scenario in which a driver was in an unfamiliar location and could read road signs thanks to wipers that effectively did their job.
Use Social Proof to Your Advantage
People don’t like to feel left out. So, if you create a marketing campaign which makes your consumers feel like other people are using your products or services and getting great results, they’ll likely be more inclined to want to be included in the group and make a purchase themselves.
Some small businesses do this by interviewing actual customers and letting them share their positive experiences with their brand on television commercials and radio ads. Another alternative would be to put case studies on your website, as they can have the same type of positive emotional effect.
Appeal to your consumers’ emotions and your marketing campaign will likely be more successful. Any thoughts on this? If so, I’d love to hear them, so feel free to share them below!
I’m always interested in learning other small business owners’ thoughts on relevant topics and issues, so if you have a comment or unique article idea, feel free to contact me at [email protected] (put “Businessing Magazine” in the subject line, please). If I use it, it’s a free link to your website!
short url:
