Emotional advertising has a specific role to play in managing customers through your marketing and sales process to actually spending money with your business and promoting your business.
To understand the vital role emotions play in advertising, we need to start by looking at the role marketing and sales play in business success.
I like to think of a successful business as one that delivers “customer value to the right customers, consistently, profitably and enjoyably”.
In this simple definition, advertising communicates your business value to the right customers.
Advertising spans all of your business marketing and sales. It’s about consistent messages, across all media, targeting the same opportunities, presented in a consistent way, to develop and define your brand.
What Is Emotional Advertising Targeting?
Emotional advertising is quite simply words, images or video that resonates with the customer on an emotional level.
It stops the customer in their tracks. They stop scrolling., they stop talking, or they stop doing something else.
The advert has aligned to a precise emotional feeling, need or desire within the customer.
The key emotions, adverts can target effectively are;
- Specific customer needs, pains or the feelings after the pain has gone – financial credit, a mortgage, insurance.
- Customer desires or dreams – new house, fashion, and jewellery.
- Customer instances of reward and satisfaction – chocolate, coffee, and food delivery.
- Emotional drivers to behave in a certain way – be fit, support the environment, or invest ethically.
The success of emotional advertising is translating your business value to resonate with the right customer to initiate an instant reaction.
What Is The Role Of Emotional Advertising?
Emotional advertising doesn’t just start the customer journey with your business, it can then be used effectively, to manage the customer from believing in your product or brand, to actually buying from you and then recommending your product or business to other customers.
Let’s look at the role of emotional advertising plays in each role of the marketing and sale process.
Awareness – Customers are time short, they are scrolling endlessly, there is a plethora of adverts to choose from, your advert has so little time to make an impact.
If there is no emotional connection, then there is very likely no impact and, thus, no awareness of your product or your business.
The ultimate goal of emotional advertising here is for the customer to remember your product, your name and how your product could make them feel.
Connection – The second role of emotional advertising is to get customers actively connecting with your product or service. Enquiring, following, talking about it with others.
The challenge here is for emotional advertising to influence the customers’ perception of your product versus a competitive product.
How is your product different or better to others?
Engagement – Engagement is about the customer’s initial experience with your product, your service, or your business.
Does the initial experience of the product or business live up to the expectations set in the emotional advertising?
Is your product or business convincing to the customer?
Conviction – Conviction is not a sentence, but about using emotional advertising to address the three primary objections a customer has to buying your product, namely;
- Time – Is it the right time? Quite often, you will see the emotional strings of special offers, special limited time editions or “Only 100 available” being used.
- Trust – Why should I trust you? Typical advertising levers here are guarantees, testimonials, reviews, or ratings.
- Value – Why should I buy your product when there is another cheaper one? This is probably the hardest challenge of all, but it is where emotional advertising underpins the brand. The advertising focuses on the emotions of needs for quality, self-esteem (famous customers), need for certainty (track record) and reputation.
Advocacy – The final role of emotional advertising is to get customers to recommend your product, usually to their friends or colleagues. They have bought your product, experienced your service, and believe in your brand. Here the emotion most often targeted is friendship. Share the benefits, schemes such as family and friends discounts and “share the love” concepts.
Examples Of Emotional Advertising
Apple’s iconic “Think Different” campaign. Apple launched a campaign that featured black-and-white images of iconic figures like Albert Einstein and Martin Luther King Jr., along with the tagline “Think Different.” The campaign was designed to tap into our emotions around creativity, innovation, and the power of individuals to make a difference in the world. The advert created a following of customers who wanted to be different and be perceived as different. This one emotional message manages awareness to engagement, and the Apple experience does the rest.
Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign. This campaign has been incredibly successful, in part, because it taps into our emotions around self-improvement, perseverance, and achieving our goals. By portraying athletes pushing themselves to their limits, the campaign inspires us to push ourselves to do the same in our own lives. This one simple emotional message spans awareness to conviction, with every customer buying into what they believe will be a tool to help their self-improvement and success.
Dove’s “Real Beauty” campaign. This campaign celebrates the beauty of l women of all ages, sizes, and shapes. By tapping into our emotions around self-acceptance, body positivity, and inclusivity, the campaign has been incredibly successful in building brand loyalty and trust with a much wider community of customers. By using such a powerful message of body positivity and inclusion, these adverts started a new tribe of convinced customers who just wanted to support and join each other.
Specsavers “Should have gone to Specsavers “campaign. These wonderful, simple adverts focus on some of the simple, hilarious mistakes we make when we don’t wear our glasses or have the wrong glasses. Its comic approach gets us to really engage with the company then the price and service do the rest.
These are just a few examples of the many ways that marketing and advertising can impact our emotions. By tapping into our deepest desires, fears, and aspirations, brands can create campaigns that resonate with us on many levels and inspire us to take action in ways that are incredibly powerful.
Actions To Develop Emotional Advertising For Your Business
- Understand your customers’ most basic needs, pains, and desires.
- Clarify what steps in your marketing and sales process you are trying to influence and what you want to achieve.
- Create and test messages that resonate with your customers.
- Engage experts to help you develop words, images, and videos to create advertising that has emotional impact.
Conclusions
- Understanding the emotions of why your customers want your product is the most very valuable investment of your time when it comes to marketing and sales.
- You are probably wasting money on advertising, marketing, or sales if it is not creating an emotional impact.
- Emotional advertising can create product, brand or business awareness, connection, engagement, conviction, and advocacy.
- Emotional advertising is a tried and tested way to succeed.
I hope you found this article interesting and useful.
Wishing you and your business all the very best in developing your very own emotional advertising.
If you would like to discuss or develop your emotional advertising, you should work with an experienced business coach and business consultant. Please get in touch at fergus@developingbusinessperformance.com
