Emotions have a strong influence on our decisions. Happiness, sadness, joy, fear, and loneliness are just some examples of emotions that can drive our decisions in one direction or another. Given the influential power of emotions, marketers can boost their desirable metrics and grow their business with emotional targeting.
Emotional targeting, also known as emotional marketing, uses influential and persuasive messages to resonate with your audience and foster a deep connection. This tactic usually appeals to a single emotion at a time – one that is powerful enough to influence a decision. For example, car brands can target fear by emphasising the safety features of their new model. An interior design can target happiness by featuring a happy family in their newly designed home.
Emotions, especially negative ones, are deeply personal. When we are lonely or stressed, we tend to take some action to reduce or escape from the feeling. We feel uneasy when we experience negative emotions and seek ways to alleviate them. If, as a marketer, you can appeal to your audience’s emotions and offer something of value – something that will influence their emotional state – you appeal to a real human tendency to use external means of changing our internal state.
This drive to take action in the face of certain emotions is beneficial for business growth. According to a 2016 Nielsen study, promotional advertisements with an emphasised emotional charge led to a 23 percent increase in sales compared to ads with an average emotional charge.
Why Is Emotional Marketing Effective?
Memorability
Emotions and memory are closely linked. When we experience strong emotions, the memory of the event in which we felt the emotion is stronger than the memory of events with less emotional charge.
If you can create emotionally resonant content, you leave an emotional imprint in your audience’s heart and mind. This, they are more likely to remember your message and your brand.
Shareability
Emotionally charged content makes people ‘feel’. When people feel strong emotions after consuming content, they are more likely to share that content.
Sites like Facebook and Twitter are filled with users voicing their thoughts, feelings, and opinions about content that has impacted them emotionally. If you can make an impact in this way, your content is more likely to be shared on social media.
Influence
Customer purchasing decisions are highly influenced by emotion-based content. According to one study, over 30 percent of ads with an emotional charge succeeded in achieving their marketing goals, compared to a 16 percent success rate from ads that were less emotionally charged and more rational.
Loyalty
When your audience feels an emotional connection to your business, they are more likely to become loyal customers, even advocates, for your brand. According to Motista, customers who are emotionally connected to a brand have a lifetime value of over 300 percent higher than customers who are not emotionally connected.
The same study also shows that the likelihood of brand recommendation is over 70 percent higher in emotionally impacted customers than others, for whom the likelihood of brand recommendation is around 45 percent.
How To Use Emotional Marketing To Grow Your Business
If you want to use emotional marketing to help your business grow, it’s important to understand how to optimise your efforts. Targeting your audience’s emotions can be profitable. However, when done incorrectly, it can leave a bad impression and actually harm your growth rate. Below we have outlined some useful tips to consider before you create and apply your emotional marketing strategy.
Understand Your Audience
The only way to connect with your audience on an emotional level is to understand the emotions that make them want to take action. You need to develop a personal understanding of your audience if you want to persuade them to convert. Do you know what their fears are? What makes them happy? What frustrates them? What motivates them?
Once you gain this insight into your customers, you can tailor your content to speak to those emotional areas of resonance and show that you understand, empathise, and, most importantly, offer a solution.
Use Stories
With an understanding of your buyer personas, you use this insight to tell effective stories throughout your content. Humans are natural story-tellers. It is a tradition that has been with us for as long as we have existed.
Stories are effective marketing tools because they help your business connect with the audience on an individual level. You might have a large audience, made up of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people. It can be hard to reach all of these customers effectively. With a good story, you can speak to your audience in a way that makes the reader feel you are speaking directly to them.
Get Creative
If you want to impact your audience, you need to publish and share memorable content. While adding an emotional charge to your content is important, you also need to spice up your content with appealing visuals and design.
Colour has an inherent emotional charge. For example, the colour red is associated with an increase in heart rate, while blue is known for its calming effects. There is an influential power in colour. As a marketer, you can use colour to increase the emotional appeal of your campaign.
Music also has an emotional charge. According to one study by audio specialists PHMG, music choices in your content can influence how your brand is perceived. If you use the right type of music for the emotions that you are trying to resonate with, you amplify the effects of your marketing efforts.
Be Authentic
Your audience is probably more emotionally intelligent than they get credit for, so it’s important to be authentic when you use emotional marketing. You can’t just provide certain emotions without regard for your prospects’ well-being. The emotions with which you wish to resonate should relate to the core values and beliefs that your business claims to have. The audience can sense your sincerity.
A Final Note
The next time you are about to create content, consider the power of emotions in your audience’s decisions. By following the above tips, you can leverage the power of emotion to optimise your marketing efforts. You want to use emotions to drive audience engagement, so don’t be afraid to make a strong impact. Once you remain authentic and show your audience that you care about them, you can reap the benefits of emotional marketing.
