If you haven’t added emotions into your marketing arsenal, you’re missing out big time! Many of the successful marketers on the planet are masters of emotions. Because emotions are great at one thing — inspire actions that generate revenue to businesses. Your success, as a marketer, lies not just in your ability to craft compelling marketing messages that resonate, but also in your ability to inspire action from potential buyers. These are the three emotions that every marketer should use in their marketing campaigns to boost results.
1. Curiosity
Humans are curious by nature. Remember that time when you were little, you couldn’t resist holding back from opening that Christmas present your parents gave you. And in the end, you just opened it without even telling them. It’s the happiest day of your life.
The mixed emotion of excitement and wanting to know what’s inside made you open that present. The same can be applied in your marketing. Once you found the right audience and conveyed the right message at the right time, your offer is like a present to your audience. They couldn’t resist knowing what’s inside.
George Lowenstein (1994) once described curiosity as the same as other drive states like hunger. We eat when we’re hungry. It’s an instinctive decision made by our subconscious mind to ensure the well-being of our body. Lowenstein suggested that curiosity works the same way.
We simply cannot stand open loops. Our brains will force us to connect the dots to satisfy the need to fill the information gap. It’s more of a reason why curiosity is a powerful marketing tool.
**Tip for you: The best way to use curiosity in your marketing is to open the conversation with a strong value proposition and leave the other half for your audience to figure it out. It’s best when combined with a strong call-to-action.
2. Empathy
Empathy builds trust. And trust is the essence of marketing. The days when you put up an ad and everyone swarms in to buy your offer is dead. Unless you’re a brand like Nike, ads won’t do much for you. If you think about it, Nike uses empathy to get where they are today.
Let’s look at Nike’s audience. It consists of athletes who value performance above anything else. These people are super athletes. They know what they’re capable of and Nike is aware of this internal value of its audience. Nike’s ads always exhibit their core values. That’s empathy in a nutshell.
Nike is a billion-dollar company that thrived through empathy marketing. From nailing down the perfect audience to storytelling, Nike has proven its marketing prowess through its ability to connect and influence its audience on a deeper level. Nike’s brand has dominated the sports market ever since it started marketing its famous slogan — Just Do It.
When done right, empathy can build a brand that lasts for decades. A brand capable of changing the way of how we do things and also the way we communicate with brands. Empathy carries huge potential when it comes to building a loyal fan base.
**Tips for you: Zero in on your ideal customers and engage with them through empathy. This will build a strong emotional connection with your audience. You’ll have an easier time marketing your products or services once you have established that connection.
3. Fear
This is the strongest of them all. It’s said to have twice the effect of pleasurable emotions. Fear doesn’t have to be explicitly expressed to get its full effect. Something as small as fear of missing out is strong enough to inspire action.
Our response to fear dates way back to the time of our ancestors. The time when our ancestors use fear for survival. For them, fear is a tool to run away from things that might bring harm. Today, marketers use fear (ethically) as a tool to tackle inactivity, especially in the digital space.
Emotion is a catalyst of action. What happens when fear is injected into our brains is emotions start to take over rational thinking. Fear is like a guide to our body that tells us to do things to avoid pain or to survive. Hence, we have little to no control over this impulse reaction. It’s a survival mechanism.
As marketers, inactivity is a headache. No matter how well we construct our value proposition or how irresistible our offer is, the only thing that matters is the activity of our customers. Tactics like FOMO and loss aversion are the best ways to sustain any marketing efforts.
**Tips for you: Make the consequences of NOT taking action as clear as possible. People procrastinate because they are given time and choices. Once those are taken away, you’ll have a strong urgency playing by your side.
Use them
The day you sprinkle emotions in your marketing is the day your life changes as a marketer. You’ll have more subscribers and leads than you’ll ever have. The best thing you can do right now is to test what emotion works well for your business and use it to your advantage.
Article originally published to Medium
Written by Nick Chai