Emotional marketing: why it’s important when using storytelling to sell your brand
Contents
- The Marketing Tactic You Can't Ignore in Tourism
- The Science of Storytelling: Why does it work?
- What is it and why do you need to know?
- Why you need to find your ‘why’
- What is the tone of voice for your brand
- Using storytelling to connect with your customers
- Effective brand marketing is more than just features and benefits
- Emotional marketing: why it’s important when using storytelling to sell your brand
- Storytelling across all your marketing platforms and mediums
- Digital Storytelling: Why Is It Important for Your Brand
Contents
- The Marketing Tactic You Can't Ignore in Tourism
- The Science of Storytelling: Why does it work?
- What is it and why do you need to know?
- Why you need to find your ‘why’
- What is the tone of voice for your brand
- Using storytelling to connect with your customers
- Effective brand marketing is more than just features and benefits
- Emotional marketing: why it’s important when using storytelling to sell your brand
- Storytelling across all your marketing platforms and mediums
- Digital Storytelling: Why Is It Important for Your Brand
Emotional marketing: why it’s important when using storytelling to sell your brand
Regardless of how much we’re willing to admit it as humans it’s our innate emotions that drive us towards the things we want.
When it comes to marketing, the entire ethos is based on telling stories to connect with audiences in the hopes of invoking a reaction, whether that’s growing a relationship with a new audience, establishing brand awareness or attracting a new customer.
When a brand communicates their vision, they deliver it in a way that’s personal and relates to the needs of their target market. How? By appealing to their emotions. In other words: they employ emotional marketing.
At its most basic understanding, emotional marketing is a strategy that stirs an emotional response from an audience, and time and time again, the more visceral the narrative, the more effective and relatable it will be.
When implemented correctly and in conjunction with storytelling tactics, emotional marketing strategies can help companies to differentiate themselves in a crowded marketplace and will help develop an authentic connection to their audience. In the scale of “emotions” available to emotional marketing, we’re not just talking about tugging on heartstrings or tickling the occasional chuckle; emotional marketing goes deeper than that. It taps into the emotions that unites us, human to human, by instilling passion and reason.
When you unpack the success of emotional marketing done well, it’s about creating an advert that doesn’t just talk about products, but one that surprises and makes people feel . emotional marketing is all about first impressions and leaving one that audiences will remember.
When you consider the number of marketing messages one person is encountering on any given day, the competition to be seen and heard becomes a race to appeal to customer desires and not their needs alone.
In emotional marketing, the focus isn’t solely on quality and price - although these are important - but on connecting to the consumer’s wants and need for acceptance, trust, love, optimism and dreams.
By applying the principles of emotional marketing to all your brand storytelling you can effectively supercharge.
How do you implement emotional marketing into your content strategy?
Start by planning content and messaging that appeals to people’s feelings, so their emotions can lead the path to purchase. Weave it into your storytelling and ensure that you are creating a combined approach.
Other things you need to consider are:
1. Know your audience
What does your product achieve in daily life?
How can you narratively convey an emotional connect to your product?
If you really want to inspire an emotional connecting with your audience, you need to know your audience which means think like your audience.
Your research into your customer’s wants and desires builds the crucial foundations for creating content they will respond to, and you need to ensure you know exactly what emotions your target audience resonate with.
2. Build trust
Before you can build trust with your customers, you need to persuade them to give you trust.
User-generated content (UGC) is a great way to build trust by maintaining a human element.
You don’t want to appear as a corporate or business entity, you need to show the humans face behind the logo. If your content shows real human interactions and experiences, particularly ones generated by your existing customer, you incite a feeling of trust.
3. Create community
Movements made by a brand can form a community, online or offline, where their customers are brought together in a shared experience or common interest.
As humans, we long for bonds and an intimacy with others. Let your marketing show how your brand is a part of a community movement, where your customer is a participant in shared values.
Invite them along in the journey of discovering themselves and others.
4. Invite nostalgia
Don’t underestimate the power of nostalgia. If you position your content narrative within a time of the past, you invoke feelings of elation, euphoria and recognition of themselves in others - not to mention a feeling of togetherness, and therefore, community.
5. Be unexpected
The unpredictability of emotional reaction is what engages recipients in the first place. Play with ideas that make your content narrative surprising, so you can excite and delight your audience.
6. Create a sense of urgency
Feeling is one thing, but being stirred to act on a feeling is what makes your campaign a success.
Ensure your content has a call to action, so their emotional response can be led by a rational reaction i.e. purchasing, getting involved or committing to your brand in a way which opens a relationship (following your social media pages, resharing content or commenting online).
7. Measure your success
Just like every other form of marketing, your emotional marketing campaigns should be measured, but you need to know how to measure an emotional response for it to be effective.
Beyond the traditional metrics of click-through, purchases and engagement, you need to consider subjective methods which can reflect unique, emotional responses on an individual basis.
The best methods to do this are running focus groups, where you can provide a talking space for discussing the initial stages of a campaign launch, or by running a call for interview participants who have interacted with your content. You can also do this through surveys or polls on social media.
Measuring your success will loop back into your formative research for determining the best ways of reaching your audience and achieving your desired emotional response. Your end goal should always be to affect emotional engagement, so you can benefit from a growth in profit and loyal, happier customers.