Human beings are powered by emotions, not reason. Our emotions defines how we feel and how we make decisions.
Neurologist Donald Calne perhaps said it best: “The essential difference between emotion and reason is that emotion leads to action while reason leads to conclusions.”
Emotions in marketing are hugely important because they define our beliefs and our actions. By creating strong emotional connections with your consumers, it will drive loyalty, word of mouth and business growth.
How do we create a strong emotional engagement?
Inspiration -when you are inspired by something you love it. The top 100 most loved brands on the planet are relevant and play a meaningful role in people’s lives. (click here to see the list of top 100 brands – ‘But Do You Love Me? Study Measures Consumer Emotional Attachment To Rank Top 100 Brands’
The 5 key human senses play a huge part in developing inspiration. We call it sensuality. It is what your brand smells like, tastes like, looks like, sounds like and feels like (and you don’t have to be a food or perfume brand to make all 5 senses work).
How do you create the kind of appeal that makes people feel inspired or laugh or cry? First, brands don’t just get it by asking. They start by giving love, demonstrating that they love the people who buy them. The sea change comes when brands stop thinking about their customers as “them” and start thinking about “us”. When marketers make this change, they start rewarding their customers every day with brand experiences that resonance.
Research firm QiQI who are pioneers in emotional research conducted a recent study that demonstrated that brands with high levels of love and respect, increased buying intention for a product as much as 7 times.
Even if your brand has high ‘respect’ you can double volume by increasing ‘love’. For example; in the cereal category, a respected brand can increase the probability of future purchase intention by 60% by increasing its love status.
7 steps to creating an emotional attachment
- Give people face to face experiences that make them feel good. This gives you a presence/a face that people can believe and trust in. Don’t hide behind email, website and TV. You need to be seen to be believed. Use other channels to enhance your communication and grow your connections.
- Make people feel that they belong to a larger, like minded group of people.
- Demonstrate that you are offering people something more then a product. Become a lifestyle brand. Just look at Disney, it sells ‘magical experiences’ not just cuddly toys.
- Develop consistent engagement directed to all people on the consumer journey i.e.: Brand Newbies, active brand considerators and buyers. This helps to maintain customers, enhance word of mouth and drive new sales.
- Help customers learn about the brand or product which provides an understanding of its function and its ability to help them.
- Understand the emotional triggers for your customers and drive to a call to action.
- Follow up with your customers and offer them advice and education to help turn them from customers into advocates. This will reduce our risk of having to fight off your competition to keep your customers.
Kevin Roberts, CEO, Saatchi and Saatchi Worldwide and Author of The Lovemarks Effect: Winning the Consumer Economy, predicts that we will see the emergence of the “Attraction Economy”. He believes, the future belongs to the brands/companies who make emotional connections with people.
Howard Shultz, Chairman of Starbucks, says people want to be part of something that they can believe in. They want to be associated with a product or service that they can rely on.
Ultimately marketeers need to understand that there is a huge difference between brand awareness and emotional engagement. Being, known doesn’t mean you will be loved.
How are Hotcow helping brands emotionally connect with customers?
At Hotcow, we recently created our emotional engagement model called R.A.R.E Advantage. It is powered by 4 key traits that brands must adopt to connect with consumers and importantly stop wasting marketing spend on “nice to have” activities that have limited to no cut through.
R.A.R.E stands for Real. Arresting. Relevant. Exposure. This means:
Real (Authentic)
Develop a unique voice and tone. Be real and true to the brand and speak in a tone that resonates with the brand – not marketing jargon.
Arresting (Engaging)
Create campaigns that inspire and surprise people. Ensure your communication and call to actions are clear to ensure word of mouth.
Relevant
Deliver campaigns that are relevant to the target audience and are meaningful to them.
Exposure
Activate campaigns that are in relevant locations and venues that give the right exposure to the brand and reach the right audience. Then create user generated content that can be shared online and tell a whole new story about your brand to a wider audience.
On a final note, a well known quote from the recently departed Zig Ziglar should be a mantra to us all: “People don’t buy for logical reasons. They buy for emotional reasons.”
We hope this article has inspired you to get more emotional with brand and your campaigns.
Please get in touch and we will help you weed out the logical from the emotional campaign components, to deliver you a better emotional experience that pays back.
Hotcow is a multi-award winning, Experiential Marketing agency that deliver 50% more ROI, than clients would receive from any other brand experience agency. We accomplish this through our ‘R.A.R.E Advantage’ platform. For more information about R.A.R.E and how it can transform your marketing impact, contact us.
