This article has been written by Ramesh P. Elaidam pursuing a Diploma in Content Marketing and Strategy from Skill Arbitrage.

This article has been edited and published by Shashwat Kaushik.

Introduction

Human beings are the most emotional creatures on earth and on top of that, they are the best communicators too. And let’s face it, we human beings are not rational or logical beings. Rather, we are emotional beings. This drives our behaviour and decision-making to a great extent. No matter how much we tell ourselves that we are rational and clear logical thinking beings and always make a purchase on logic rather than emotions, the human brain is wired to react to emotions.

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The marketing world has utilised these two factors in tapping into customers’ buying decisions and creating connections that ensure that they become loyal customers to brands. This becomes pretty simple once we come to accept that emotion has everything to do with creating a loyal and enthusiastic clientele. Emotional marketing primarily uses the emotional quotient to appeal to your customers. It also endeavours to make existing and new customers pay attention and want to buy your products. This takes into account the fact that emotions are what our brains process most efficiently.

Facts do not have the same advantage as emotions. I would suggest a simple test to drive this home; try saying the different states in India and their capitals. You might be able to do it, but I bet it won’t be easy. On the other hand, ask any of the kids of the ‘90s about the Pepsi ad, “Yehi hai right choice baby! I bet you will be rewarded with an instant smile as they remember the anticipation of the ad, which featured Juhi Chawla and Remo Fernandes, the buildup, and finally, when it came out, how it resonated with their generation. 

In this article, we take a look at how emotional marketing can make a huge difference in how brands and products can be marketed. Along with this, we will have a look at some facts and figures too. Let us have a look at figuring out how to leverage emotions to effectively market your products and how different types of emotions can affect consumer behaviour and decisions. We can also take a look at some of the emotions and how they help catch attention and influence buying behaviours. Learning how to dissect these effectively and, in the process, learn how to craft such masterpieces of emotional marketing by focusing on best practices and techniques is pretty cool. We will also figure out how to measure and optimise the impact of these marketing messages, focusing on how to use data and feedback.

Finally, we will conclude with a summary of what we learned and a few actionable tips for implementing emotional marketing in businesses. An attempt will be made to provide inputs on how to do market research and segment audiences based on emotional factors and how emotional words and images can create powerful, catchy headlines and subs, You will also have a glance at storytelling techniques and how they help in creating emotional narratives and scenarios, as well as how to refine them based on feedback and data. We will also reflect on the ethical use of emotional marketing.

What is emotional marketing and how does it matter

In its simplest form, emotional marketing is the creation of a marketing strategy that connects with human emotions and persuades customers to buy a product, service, or brand. The effectiveness of good emotional marketing is that it makes your audience easier to connect with, engage, convince, and retain. Let’s have a look at a couple of figures to explain why emotional marketing is ranked so highly among professionals.

According to Harvard Business Review (HBR), the emotional connection between a customer and a company is 52% more valuable than customer satisfaction

Moz, one of the SEO giants, states that anger-inducing content has a 38% chance of going viral. In turn, content based on awe has a 34% chance of doing so.

The power of emotions

There is no hiding the fact that emotions rule when marketing experts sit down to create new marketing strategies. Emotional marketing is one of the best bets for marketers to ensure that their campaigns succeed. However, there are still nay-sayers who have failed to realise the importance of emotional marketing and this article is my humble attempt to ensure that these dinosaurs are converted. 

The emotional approach to marketing goes beyond the old maxim of collecting data, figuring out the problems, and addressing the needs of the customer. How does it do that? 

Psychology behind emotional marketing

Emotional marketing tries to not only identify the pain points of the end customers but also how to exploit those. What are the emotions that customers derive from your company’s products? What are the emotions that the customers are trying to experience? How to go about figuring out the ideal emotion that you need to develop in your customers so that they will buy your products. Finally, you have to figure out what emotions you do not want your strategy to generate, as having the wrong emotion generated can have a devastating effect on product sales.

Simply put, you can divide emotions into two positive and negative. Positive emotions are feel-good emotions and negative emotions are fear and anger. Surprisingly, both of these emotions can work equally well at persuading customers to make purchases. It is up to the marketing team to identify what works best for the business and generate the appropriate campaigns. To put things simply, let us try to identify a few.

Self-esteem

This targets the customer’s desire to feel good about themselves. They are a big “yes” in marketing. Personalised messages to your target audience are a surefire way to boost sales and create a recurrent buyer base.

Authority and Experts /Reviews and Testimonials

Hearing from an expert makes a claim more believable and influences customers. A famous chef recommending a sauce or masala product is sure to boost its sales. Plus, having positive testimonials and reviews from customers will create a positive effect on your sales by building trust and establishing your credibility. 

Happiness

Campaigns that generate feel-good emotions are surefire hits with the customers and can influence their behaviours. Enthusiasm is contagious and starting the ball rolling with a good campaign will ensure that you are halfway there to success. Incorporate a sense of fun, joy, success, and achievement into your marketing.

Sadness

Showcase a problem, how bad it is, and how it can create problems for someone, and then provide them with a solution to address the issue. Showing the story of someone being sad to empower them will always boost your sales when done effectively.  Sadness tends to create empathy and empathy leads to better sales.

Fear 

Fear has to be handled carefully. It is a primal emotion that can pay immense dividends when sold effectively but can also backfire if not handled properly. The term FOMO, which depicts fear of missing out, is a cannon in advertising and marketing. Premium offers (limited edition products) and limited-time offers are some of the best examples of these.

Anger and disgust 

Take a negative story and derive an inspiring outcome from it and you have a winner.  Graphic images of cruelty to pets have been long used to encourage people to take up animal rights and have proved to have been very effective. Similarly, addressing a pain point with a product of your own will address the anger and frustration of the customer while boosting your products

Storytelling

Storytelling is a major way marketing agencies and companies get their message across to their customers. Done effectively, it helps create your brand’s story and lets you get in sync with your audience’s feelings and emotions. Stories can be leveraged effectively to mirror and enhance emotions into “grab you by your throat” messages that will get your audience every time.   Every good story should use a narrative structure with a well-defined beginning, middle, and end which includes characters, conflicts, and resolutions.

Impact of emotional marketing on consumer behaviour

Emotion sells, and emotional marketing is one of the biggest and most successful tools in today’s world. Always use emotions, feelings, and sensations to structure your campaigns and strategies based on them. Emotional marketing is the process of connecting with your customers and persuading them to take some desirable action. By better connecting with your customers’ emotions, not only will they be satisfied with your products, but they will also become loyal customers who will prefer your brand over others. Emotional marketing is a powerful tool to connect with your customers. But it comes with some caveats that you should be aware of.

Ethical considerations in emotional marketing

Emotional appeals can be extremely powerful, can even be considered extremely manipulative and need mature and responsible handling. Also, the potential impact on the vulnerable sections of the target clientele needs to be carefully considered and the message modified as needed. For example, marketing health products too aggressively can lead to people with actual or imagined health issues being placed at risk of buying things that might not be indicated for their problems, and that can even be counter-indicative. Thus, it behoves your marketing team to always consider the audience as a whole and ensure the message has no negative societal trends.

Your team should be good enough to ensure that the message is communicated effectively. This requires a good match between the marketing team and the product. Your campaign should be respectful and inclusive to ensure that there are no negative pushbacks. Never tell the customer in front of their face what to do. Show them what your product can do and what you think it can deliver, and let the customers connect the dots.

Increasing your emotional capital with customers will ensure that they are emotionally invested, leading to increased purchasing, loyalty, and retention. An ideal emotional marketing campaign will deliver the same or similar results as a good B2C, one-on-one, or one-to-few marketing campaign.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the importance of emotion in content marketing cannot be emphasised enough. Emotional marketing is a powerful tool that allows brands to connect with their audience on a deeper level, influencing their behaviour and creating lasting connections. By understanding and leveraging different types of emotions, marketers can create campaigns that resonate with their target audience, driving engagement and loyalty.

It’s important to remember that emotional marketing should be used ethically and responsibly. Marketers should consider the impact of their campaigns on vulnerable populations and ensure that their messages are respectful and inclusive.

Overall, emotional marketing is a valuable strategy for businesses looking to create meaningful connections with their customers. By tapping into the power of emotion, brands can drive sales, loyalty, and retention, ultimately leading to long-term success.

References

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