The Importance of Emotional Marketing for Building Customer Rapport
What Is Emotional Marketing?
Every day we will all experience a huge range of emotions - happiness, anger, relief, disappointment, sympathy, fear… the list goes on.
Emotions are the main motivator in everything we do. As consumers, they play a big part in the spending decisions we make.
The choice to make a purchase may seem a rational one, but its roots run much deeper. Effective marketing engages customers with emotion, not reason.
Take, for example, the iconic Hovis advert from 1973.This advert is not designed to reason with customers about bread; its success lies in its ability to stir feelings of wholesome nostalgia.
Why It Matters for Your Business
So why make the effort to engage your customers emotionally?
Whether you’re a recent startup or a successful business, the best way to stand out is by creating an emotional connection with your customers. It’s not enough just to sell a great product - you need your audience to buy into your brand’s ideology and the whole experience of doing business with you. Trigger the right emotions and you will attract new customers and, more importantly in the long run, build a level of trust in your brand and a stronger customer base. Remember: emotions trigger actions.
Whatever you’re selling, whether it’s vintage jewellery or a window-cleaning service, an emotional connection with the brand can and must be achieved for a brand to be successful.
If your customers connect with your brand, they’re more likely to buy your product - it’s that simple.
How to Engage Customers with Emotional Marketing
So how do you implement emotional marketing tactics in your business plan?
Emotional marketing is largely about giving your customers an ego boost. You need to assure them that they’re on the right track and that they’re not alone in their anxieties.
Take, for example, the 2006 advert for Dove’s ‘Evolution’ campaign.
This ad sets Dove apart from its competitors: although it’s a cosmetics brand, they manage to convey that their concern is with ‘real’ beauty.
The ad aims to show how female beauty in the media is manipulated by clever makeup and photoshop editing. Dove is offering a comforting ‘truth’ for its image-conscious customers, instilling feelings of relief and empowerment - both positive emotions.
You can apply the same rules to your small business.
Here are our tips for using emotional marketing in your own branding strategy:
- Get visual: a picture speaks a thousand words. It’s easier and more effective to use evocative images than to try and write compelling copy.
- Identify with your customer. Put yourself in their shoes to really think what they might need from your product, and deliver it.
- Embellish your service. Give your customer the best experience with extra bits and bobs. Create an email newsletter with helpful tips and news from your industry, if you’re selling a tangible product, consider the way it’s packaged and displayed. Show care in the little details and it can give your rapport with customers a big, subliminal boost!
- Have a great website! A website should act as your front of shop. Whatever your product, a cohesive website with a few extra resources is a must. Consider including a blog, an image gallery, comprehensive contact information etc.
Effectively harness the power of emotion with your marketing tactics and you are guaranteed to gain trust and leads for your business.
Source: www.create.net
41 Social Media Tips for Omani Small Business Owner
- What’s your social media goal? If you don’t know where you want to go, it’s pretty hard to get there.
- Promote your most popular posts – and that goes for blog posts as well as social media posts.
- If you hate tracking, at least track with Facebook Insights. It’ll show you a lot about your Page progress.
- How do you get the conversation going on social media? Try humor and controversy. They’re very powerful.
- Social media is a powerful thing, but never mistake fooling around with being productive. Stay focused!
- Click FB Insights’ “Posts>When Your Fans are Online” to see your audience’s peak posting times. (Post during these times!)
- Look for questions repeated over and over on your chosen social networks. Provide the definitive answer.
- Analyze your own tweets. Which types got most retweeting? Most Interaction? Questions, graphics or ?
- Don’t be shy with your social media presence. Go for it – but be authentic – and be social!
- Still trying to be everyone’s “friend”? Each connection counts – and speaks loudly about who you are to your other connections.
- If you want your social content to social content to attract, do your best to share quality tips that are really unique.
- Make sure you speak with an identifiable, individual voice when posting social content. Your posts should never sound “canned”.
- Be consistent and post regularly during your audience’s peak posting times on any social networks you’ve chosen to frequent.
- If you use Pinterest regularly, make sure you also access http://nitrogr.am/ for powerful, easy to use Pinterest analytics.
- Use http://nitrogr.am/ for easy hashtag monitoring. (Let your social networking friends know about this, too.)
- Posts people skip most? Highly personal negative posts complaining about illness and problems. (Do you agree?)
- Include a mix of rich media in your social content. Video, photos, Instagram and Vine looping video clips.
- Vine video clips loop. Instagram video clips don’t. Vine streams on Twitter; Instagram videos on Facebook.
- Vine videos are 6 seconds long. Instagram are 15 seconds. How can you use this information for your marketing?
- Tapping your screen for a Vine video starts filming. Tapping your screen for an Instagram video just adjusts focus.
- Be sure you don’t use any banned hashtags with your Instagram photos or videos: http://thedatapack.com/banned-hashtags-instagram/
- Use Instagram hashtags to crowd-source user-generated content as well as extend your own reach.
- Remember that Instagram hashtags are not case-sensitive and don’t work with spaces or special characters.
- If your preferred social platform doesn’t have good native analytics, look for third party sites that provide it.
- Give your new product campaign a name – and start talking about it on your social media.
- Make sure all new product posts are made regularly. Don’t let gaps occur. Keep it fresh in people’s minds (without overdoing it.)
- Don’t tell everyone too much at once about your upcoming project. Mystery breeds interest! Hints and teasers are part of the fun.
- Use surveymonkey.com to create free surveys. You can ask questions for your new product idea and share the link on social media.
- If you’re advertising on Facebook, remember your ad images, including the thumbnail, cannot include more than 20% text.
- Take advantage of the fact you can now use text, arrows and calls to action in Facebook Cover –photos.
- Facebook Profile photos are square and display at 160 x 160 pixels – but remember Facebook wants you to upload at 180 x 180.
- At the very least, include a Facebook app tab leading to your sign-up page or form (and use a clear, easy-to-read call to action.)
- You can display 3 custom app tabs of your choice in your Facebook header section. Make the most of this “real estate”!
- Only your short description displays in your Facebook header section, but fill out your Profile 100% for max searchability.
- Select “Replies On” in your Page Admin panel “Manage Permissions” section to increase the conversation on your Page.
- If you consistently get endorsements that are not relevant on LinkedIn, be aware you can remove endorsements completely.
- Check “Who’s Viewed Your Profile” in LinkedIn to see who is finding you – as well as the keywords they used.
- In your LinkedIn Privacy and Settings page, "Select what others see when you've viewed their profile” to keep it private - or not.
- In Google+ posts, encase text in asterisks for bold and underscore it to create italics. (Share this tip!)
- Did you know Google+ makes animated .GIFs from your photos? Just type the keyword “motion” in your Photos section to find them.
- Use the Google+ Ripples feature to track your posts by clicking the top-right arrow in your post.
