Emotion is one of the driving factors behind our purchasing behaviors. In fact, a Harvard professor claims that we actually make 95% of our buying decisions subconsciously. Regardless of the products or services we seek, all of us consistently exhibit the same buyer behaviors. Smart marketers understand human psychology and how it impacts marketing. The fact is humans are emotional creatures. That\’s what makes emotional branding and selling so effective. When you understand your target market\’s mindset you can craft messaging that will resonate with them. Small elements like color palette, message tone, and media decisions can make or break the success of an ad campaign or brand identity.
Emotional Branding Explained
For starters, emotional marketing is a successful tactic that allows you to connect to your customers on a deeper, personal level. It helps brands cultivate lasting and meaningful consumer relationships. Generally, emotional branding relies on the art of using emotion-based techniques to connect with the target audience. With emotional branding and storytelling, you can personalize and humanize your brand. Ultimately, the goal is to create a sense of familiarity between the consumer and the seller.
When people connect with your brand on an emotional level it increases customer loyalty. Best of all, you can optimize almost anything in your marketing campaign to give it an emotional component. That includes your name, logo, user experience, ads, your products, social media pages, and more.
By tapping into the consumer’s subconscious, brands can target their emotional state, aspirations, or needs. This technique depends on the consumer’s natural desire for emotional security, love, ego gratification, power, and various other emotions.
More Than Meets the Eye
While emotional branding is somewhat self-explanatory, it actually relies on a complex set of practices. If it’s unsuccessful, it can confuse your audience. Or worse, it can cloud your brand\’s mission– so don\’t overdo it.
Targeted emotional messaging and detailed research can help you develop a more effective brand marketing strategy. Emotional branding gives consumers something to relate to. For example, consider the famous company rivalries such as Apple vs. Microsoft or Coca-Cola vs. Pepsi. Here, you can see that emotional branding leads to long-term superfans. When customers resonate with a brand\’s message they begin to view the brand as an extension of their identity. Also, they may consistently take a stand and promote their favorite products because the brand has managed to cultivate a sense of belonging among its customer base.
What’s more, emotional branding isn’t only about advertising. It is used on every aspect of a given brand to initiate a primal pull. This is what makes consumers pick certain brands over others. According to CMO by Adobe, relevance and awareness can help brands become big. However, brands that rely on emotional seduction — which targets our instincts and impulses — can truly become great.
Mind Games
So how do brands provoke emotional responses? One of the most successful examples here is Apple. Its emotional branding strategy relies on clean designs. Apple focuses on minimalist design and garners customer loyalty by positioning itself as a luxury lifestyle brand.
Apple product releases usually fill us with a sense of mystery and anticipation. What’s more, they make us feel like we are a part of something bigger. Apple’s emotional branding relies on making consumers feel like they are becoming a part of a savvy lifestyle movement. And this is just one example of superb emotional branding.
Across the board, there are many emotional hooks that digital marketers are using to provoke a response. Quite often, emotional branding is guided by a single primal emotion. That can be love, anger, fear, happiness, or any other emotion on the spectrum. It can also play on the consumer’s sense of belonging, intimacy, and bonding.
By using themes, symbols, stories, and other methods, a company can play on the consumer’s ability to subconsciously process emotional messages. In the eye of the consumer, the brand’s image and its story can become forever intertwined with a specific emotion.
Why You Should Consider Emotional Branding
If your business carefully uses emotional branding to reach its demographic, it can:
- Become memorable
- Increase its ability to be shared among groups of people
- Impact purchasing decisions
- Build brand loyalty
- Offer more value to customers
- Increase the number of brand advocates
Rise Local Effective Marketing Strategies
Emotional branding is a complex field of marketing that takes years of research and experience to master. Contact us at Rise Local today to learn more about the most compelling marketing techniques for your business!