Did you know the most effective wayto advertise to your audience is by triggering an emotion? Think the John LewisChristmas adverts, WWF adverts, and Valentine’s day campaigns alike. TheAmerican motivation speaker, Zig Ziglar famously said that “people don’t buythings for logical reasons, they buy for emotional reasons”.
Five of the most recognisableemotions seen in advertising are happiness, nostalgia, fear, anger, and love.
Happiness – think jokes (“Youshould have gone to Specsavers”) and joyful situations (the cute kittensappearing from the biscuit packet).
Nostalgia – Take people back totheir childhood with that favourite sweet they used to love, something familyorientated (Dolmio sauce), or an ad that has been around forever (Toys ‘R’ Us).
Fear – Over the years there havebeen numerous road safety adverts to highlight the dangers of unsafe drivingwhich aim to put fear into drivers to avoid those situations (hitting a littlegirl and her chance of survival based on your speed, the importance of wearingyour seatbelt, etc.)
Anger – This doesn’t have to be anegative thing. Anger can be because the person is passionate about the brand(think Barry Scott in the Cillit Bang advert).
Love – Perfume ads are a primeexample. The woman wears the perfume and she’s all loved up with the man, orthe animal attraction of a man wearing Lynx!
But what about products that are alittle more on the boring side? Or rather, can’t be jazzed up quite like a JohnLewis advert. In order to gain new customers, retain them, and earn theirloyalty, you’ve got to go the extra mile and make them ‘feel’ something andwork to make them fall in love with your brand.
So how can youdo this?
1) Make sure you look sharp:
- Even in today’s digital world, it’s oftenoverlooked that your website is your essentially your digital shop front. We’realways saying to our clients that first impressions count and your website isno different, as it is often the first interaction a potential customer haswith your business or brand. So, if it’s cluttered, looking tired, or takesages to load – does this really give the right impression? Or rather does itevoke anger? If your site is difficult to use and isn’t looking its best, youcould be memorable, for all the wrongreasons! Appearance matters!
2) Be consistent:
- When it comes to branding, consistency is key. Toattract a new customer, it takes time and repetition to go from the awarenessstage to the brand recognition stage. It can take up to 15times for someone to have seen something about your business in theirperipheral vision before a customer really becomes aware of you. So, it’simportant that all of these messages and channels are consistent so that youcan move them along the funnel and get a customer to interact with you.Essentially by being consistent with your branding, people are more likely toremember you, then eventually trust you and interact with you.
3) Create good content:
- Interesting content is the top three reasonpeople follow brands on social media. B2Bcompanies with blogs generate 67% more leads per month on average than non-bloggingfirms. It’s all well and good looking good and being consistent, but justlike dating, if you’re not putting yourself out there, how are people going toknow you’re there? However, gone are the days when you can just throw a blogout there, for blogging sake. As we said previously, your website is often thefirst interaction a potential customer has with your brand. Customers (in boththe B2B and B2C worlds) are increasingly carrying out more research on brandsas part of their decision-making process. This includes visiting a brands blog page to see what kind of informationyou are putting out there. Again, just like dating, you need to impress yourpotential customer by going the extra mile. This means writing engaging,educational, and informative content.
4) Encourage customer feedback:
- The classic statistic, that if someone receivesbad service, they’re likely to on average to tell 11 people about it and it’sall too true, isn’t it? However, have you heard that if a customer gets theirissue resolved, that they tell on average4-6 people? It’s certainly a better story to put out there and is a way toinfluence the word of mouth around your business. Just like in any normalscenario, customers want to be spoken to like real people and if a mistake hasbeen made and it can be resolved efficiently, you are much more likely toretain a happy customer.
