How to Transform Your Marketing by Appealing to Emotions

Fundamentally, we're all emotional creatures. We don’t have rationality as the basis of our lives, and we let emotions dictate our decisions from time to time. When we understand, as marketers, that emotions contribute a large portion to the way consumers make choices – we can use that to our advantage. If we appeal to their inner emotional-self, we can make wide-standing changes that can benefit them in many ways.

When we think about emotions, we might be quick to jump to the word ‘emotional’. We don’t want customers feeling emotional about our products and services. But we do want to evoke an emotion that leads to action. That’s the key here. If we want anything done, from our customers’ end, then we need to make sure that we appeal to their emotional need that is interconnected with the product or service.

E.g. if you’re Adobe and you’re selling Photoshop to B2B customers, the you can’t sell enough editing software through a simple price-to-value transaction. You need to appeal to their emotions and talk about what they can accomplish with the freedom and power of Photoshop. Selling this dream is core to Adobe’s marketing strategy and it banks its dollars on this very fact.

Apple does this all the time with their creator-first strategy, and their appeal to the artistic side of every person. Creativity is key to Apple’s marketing, while in contrast Microsoft would appeal more to the need for security and being a part of the crowd. Both appeal to the emotional side of the customer, but one has a different approach than the other. This is why positioning is so important and marketing needs to focus on the emotional side of the people.

While there is so much focus on emotive messages, flash sales and promotions that leverage FOMO, there is an even deeper topic at hand that needs to be discussed. When considering, appealing to emotions, we must be aware of whom we are talking to. We can’t have a generic sale, or a generic message, and we must speak specifically to one person who we can target. That customer demographic is a key decision maker in the organization or family, and that’s who we need to speak to when we market to them.

Data-driven insights can only get us so far, and we need to go deep into consumer psychology to get the truth behind many of the actions that drive commerce in the world. We need to look at what motivates our customers and what kind of things they are willing to do to get that product. When McDonald's was on the rise, people loved the dollar menu. Now that obesity is increasing, they are focusing more on Wendy’s and Chipotle. Consumers have a mindset that you must tap into in order to become more successful.

You can appeal to their progressive side of thinking or their protective side. Either one can be leveraged for either purpose. When we think about progressing from one thing to another, we imagine innovation and an appeal to the artist inside all of us.

We also think about how better the world can be if we had that product in our hands. This is especially true for Elon Musk’s Tesla Electric Cars. They appeal to the progressive side of people’s emotions, so much so that they have the world sales record of the highest order value during launch day.

We must get to the point of ‘the guiding force’. What is the guiding force behind the decision that some managers take, and others don’t. Is it a part of their KRA or is it something that they’d like to have but can live without? Whatever the case may be, you need to figure out their guiding force to be able to appeal to their emotions. They can listen to your sales pitch and your revenue charts for weeks without taking action, but maybe there’s something else going on in their mind that needs focusing on first.

Scientists have been able to create extensive models that talk about how a customer makes a decision on what they purchase, however no single model has yet to become scalable to the point of global standard. There are the proponents of the ‘99c’ strategy where they remove 1c off the price and suddenly everyone’s buying into it. It's genius, right? It’s a mathematical trick to appeal to customers’ emotional side.

The other part of the whole deal is predictive analytics. You must be able to predict where the demand is going to be able to use that ‘appeal to emotion’ strategy. Using data and spreadsheets you can figure out where the demand is trending towards and take appropriate action. You can find out these key trends by analysing customer data, industry charts and conducting SWOT analysis on new opportunities.

Then, you can develop a robust model to communicate with the customer, to be able to appeal to their emotional side. You only have a few seconds of their time, before they delete that email or click ‘skip ad’, or reach for their phones during a meeting. This is why it's better to get their attention through emotion, early on.

Emotions are best portrayed and engaged with thorough proof. If you don’t have proof on the subject matter that you’re discussing, then you won’t get anywhere with your message. Customers are tired of seeing BS advertising where people are faking emotions to get their dollars. They are well aware of that. You need to be able to show proof through video or images to get their attention. Statistics work here too, but you need to craft a human story around the numbers.

Conclusion

Appealing to emotions can completely transform the way that you market your products. No longer do you need to use logic and facts alone to compete in the marketplace. When you can tap into the consumer’s mindset you can reach for gold! Start using this strategy today.