Emotions drive people on a daily basis. People’s choices are tied up to emotional responses to things they come across. With emotional marketing, businesses have found a way to influence consumer targeting with psychological triggers to get customers to click, convert, and engage.

When emotions are the major factor in decision-making, you can’t afford to ignore them in your content. You need to use emotional marketing to build deeper connections with your audience and encourage them to act.

What does Emotional Marketing actually mean?

According to HubSpot, emotional marketing refers to the marketing efforts made to an audience and influence them to notice, share, buy and also remember. Emotional marketing taps into people’s emotions and the psychological well-being of the audience. This advertising effort is influential as consumers tend to likely purchase or engage when they come across something through emotions like fear, happiness, anger, or sadness. 

Emotional marketing has been significantly effective as it mainly influences consumers to engage with a brand solely on their emotional reactions. It is easy to connect to an audience to influence a desired outcome with emotional marketing. Utilising this will influence the audience to desire what your business is selling. 

How Emotional Marketing Can Increase Sales 

Emotional content can be used to drive sales, improving brand loyalty and creating positive experiences. Making sure that as a business you sell the experience and not the product will influence the desired emotional responses from your audience. 

Creating emotional content requires you to not only know your target audience but also know what drives them emotionally. As a brand you need to identify which emotions are most relevant for your product or service. An example includes how some businesses target audiences through one of the most effective components of emotional marketing which is fear. When people see an advertisement that makes them feel fear or guilt, they tend to react positively to the message. This is important because some consumers may be hesitant to buy something and emotional influences will get them to purchase.

Emotional marketing can boost sales and also help you to build relationships with your customers. These relationships make it easier for your company to connect with your customers and provide them with valuable feedback. It is very important to understand your audience as it is to connect with them through marketing. 

Emotional Marketing

Emotional examples to targeting your audience

Happiness / Joy

Getting an audience to feel this emotion is the best form of advertising as it influences them to share that emotion. This is good for brand association development of a business as it is what consumers likely remember about your business. Audiences take appreciation to what fuels easy decisions that make them happy. The most common yet effective emotional marketing with happiness is through ads that generally show people having fun. This lets the viewer dive in the same experience and causes them to desire and then purchase. With Emerald Park (previously Tayto Park), showing people having fun and enjoying the rides promotes happiness and need to go for audiences. 

Pride

This is about making your customers feel good about themselves when associating with your company. This is a positive emotional response or reaction towards what you are offering to your customers. This feeling is more long-term and when customers take pride in your brand they become loyal customers. This emotion is generally associated with personal values, your identity, hard work or broad mental representations. 

Fear/ Sadness

Invoking fear to your audience can be a negative form of advertising but in some cases this may be just the right form of marketing. When we experience fear it is naturally followed by the need to be comforted or reassured. With fear marketing, when presenting a scary situation for an audience, following that with a solution gives consumers a need for what you are offering. It promotes loyalty and immediate action from consumers with your brand in order for them to feel more comfortable or safe. Fear marketing gets consumers to see the benefits of using your product or service should they be in a scary situation. With Covid-19 healthcare systems used fear of contacting the virus, to promote vaccines and immediate actions for audiences to receive them. 

Anger

If you want an audience to side with you over a situation, try using anger marketing. Brands can use this to influence audiences to side with them or support them over an issue. The influence is surrounded by generating audiences to view situations as unfair or unjust so they support you. This is mainly influential when associated with viral marketing as consumers will not only engage by liking and commenting, but also sharing your marketing content. An example of anger marketing is with the environmental movements that highlight climate change dangers which audiences will receive and support the cause to be more environmentally friendly.

Emotional marketing strategies 

Implementing strategies that lead to sales is important no matter how much attention you receive or how viral your emotional marketing content goes. Ensuring there’s an actual benefit your business receives that is what matters. 

Emotional branding

Emotional branding is directly associated with what you stand for as a brand and creating meaningful connections with your customers. Advertisements are what mainly sets the tone for building this brand image. This becomes the very identity of your brand creating a lasting response from consumers. Nike is an example of a brand that provokes feelings of activeness and inspiration which is their brand identity. This creates long lasting relationships which also makes the customers purchase out of loyalty to the brand. 

Emotional advertising

Emotional Marketing

Emotional advertising is related to advertisements placed by the companies to evoke intended emotions and raise awareness around their brand. This also builds trust with their target audience. These can be used to establish a brand into larger discussions on events like political events. Emotional advertising speaks to its target audience at an emotional level that helps promote trust and even brand loyalty.

Storytelling  

Storytelling helps your brand connect with your consumers on an emotional level and also maintains the story and people will remember your story for a long time. The goal of storytelling is to be memorable and good at it. This lets customers remember your brand for generations and when they are in the decision-making process they are most likely going to purchase your product. KitKat has been so memorable for years that it is now a norm for consumers to think about purchasing from the brand as their storytelling has been memorable for years. 

Be sure to Make your Marketing Emotional

Ensure that you utilise emotional marketing to your advertisements as it is crucial. This helps to create your brand identity and gets consumers to connect with you. Ensuring that you are on top of your marketing game against your competition is also essential. This can help you change the strategy and be set apart from their strategies to distinguish your brand from the others. Becoming a strong brand means conquering your own emotional territory. Ensuring that your company stays consistent with marketing means that you will be on your consumers’ minds.