Using Emotion in Marketing Communications
Great marketing seeks to tug at the emotional strings of the audience. Because if you can get them to think about things that trigger emotions – like happiness, longing, their sense of loss and more, you can also trigger them to answer your call to action. In fact, if you do it right, you can elicit those emotions in an audience just by them seeing your brand.
Titles
Use emotional trigger words in your titles to get your audience’s attention. Appeal to their sense of curiosity or loss. Words like “last chance” or “limited time offer” can and will go far in helping you get more click-throughs and responses, too.
Headlines
Whether it’s an email marketing message or a blog post, it’s important to develop creative headlines that don’t confuse the reader but instead pique their attention. Use headlines such as “8 Ways to Ride a Bike” or “101 Ways to Avoid a Dating Disaster” to get their attention and make them want to read the article, eBook or content.
Subheaders
Sometimes a subheader can help explain what’s going to be inside so that you entice your audience to read the content, listen to the podcast, or watch the video. You can think of them as taglines too. Just a few words to push your audience over the edge to consume the content will go far.
Power Words and Phrases
Create a swipe file of power words and phrases that you can use when you want to trigger emotion in your audience. Words and phrases like “act now”, “bonus”, or “breakthrough” will work to get your audience into the mood you want them in to receive your messages.
Transitions
Don’t underestimate how important transition words are in text and speech. You can put your audience in exactly the mood you want them in with the right transition words. Words and phrases like “Listen…” or “Never again” or “Still not convinced” will go far in helping you explain a concept even more deeply.
Calls to Action
Never, under any circumstances, forget to add in a call to action or two. Your CTA is important because, without it, your audience is unlikely to do what you want them to do based on the information you’ve provided. You have to tell them what to do. “Buy now”, “Reserve your space”, “Click here now to start your free trial”, are all good CTAs, but you need to be as specific as possible.
Closing Phrases
Another opportunity to tug at your audience’s emotions is with closing phrases. You can use phrases like, “It’s in your hands”, “This is the final day that…” or “You’re moments away from changing your life by …” and so forth. See how these words trigger certain emotions?
Postscripts
Never forget the power of a P.S. when you’re writing a letter, a sales page, or email. After you’re done, just in case the audience is still reading instead of acting, include the P.S. and say something like, “P.S. Your satisfaction is always guaranteed” or “P.S. Act by Friday and you’ll also get the free report” and so forth.
When you incorporate these trigger words and phrases into your marketing communications, you’ll see an immediate return on investment. The power you have when it comes to using emotion in marketing is astronomical.
Emotional Marketing Online
Everything you do online can incorporate emotional marketing techniques. It doesn’t matter if it’s text, images, audio or visual in the form of video. First, let’s talk a bit about the various types of emotions that you can elicit with your content.
Types of Emotion
Visceral
When something impacts an audience member at the subconscious level, we say that the reaction is visceral. Your content, website design and so forth should evoke the feelings you want the visitor to feel without even thinking about it.
Behavioral
Emotions and behavior go together hand in hand. When your audience member reads your content, listens to a video, or visits your website, the feelings they have should also elicit a behavioral response. For example, if a visitor comes to your website and feels frustrated with the navigation, their emotional feelings of frustration will elicit the response of leaving your website.
Reflective
Once your audience member leaves your website, stops reading your eBook, or moves on past your content, it should stick with them enough to cause a response of some sort based on their feelings. They might answer the CTA, or share your information with others, or think about it for a while, but they won’t forget.
Aspects to Consider
Emotional marketing is a powerful tool that you can use in all your marketing efforts. It doesn’t matter if it’s a website, a sales page, a video or something else entirely – all aspects of it should be considered, such as:
The Words
Know what words trigger emotion and action in your audience. Use words to focus on the benefits your product or service offers your audience. Remember that they want to know what’s in it for them, not what’s in it for you.
For example: Use trigger words like “Limited time offer…” or “Act now to completely change your life in the next 10 minutes…” You don’t want to lie, but you do want to give it to them straight and tell them exactly what their benefits are for acting now.
The Images
Images of people tend to bring forth more emotion for people. Let the face of the person demonstrate the emotion that you want the audience to feel as they look at your website, watch the video or consume other content that you offer.
For example: If you’re writing about freedom and how your audience can experience freedom, try using a picture of something that demonstrates freedom to your audience. Use also a typical person that could be part of your audience, showing the emotional release they feel as they realize they have true freedom.
The Colors
Some colors evoke different emotions based on culture, sex, and many other factors, so it’s extra important to understand exactly who your audience is. You want the colors you choose to elicit the right emotions in your audience.
For example: If you want your audience to feel as if they should be excited and passionate about something, choose known passion colors like red and orange. If you want them to feel happy and free, choose a color like yellow to emulate the color of sunshine which makes people joyful. Do check to ensure that the culture you’re marketing to does not have a different idea.
In order to accomplish that, you need to understand your audience completely so that you realize what their emotional needs are, plus what emotions trigger action for them. You can learn this by surveying your audience, getting to know them more, and asking for a lot of feedback as you create new products and services for them.
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