5 emotional triggers in marketing

Imagine your advertising and marketing becoming 2X more effective overnight. Using emotions in marketing and branding is the key to more effective campaigns

According to Roger Dooley, emotional ads work TWICE as well as rational ads. So it’s important your campaign incorporates emotion from the start. You can deploy these emotions through copy and creative in all formats, analog and digital.

Before you create your next campaign, check in with these powerful emotions in marketing and branding.  Be sure you’ve considered your strategy, both long and short term before deciding which emotion works best in your marketing.

Fear
Fear comes in many forms, and it creates a sense of urgency.

Fear also heightens any other emotion created alongside it and it drives us to make deeper connections with those we share the fear with-this is why scary movies create deepen relationships. 

There are several different kinds of fear, but two common types include:
“Fear Of Missing Out” (FOMO): This particular fear tends to work well on younger people in social media. This works particularly well for items with time sensitivity.
“Fear of Isolation”: closely connected to FOMO, fear of isolation, used in connection with health products, deodorant for example: “use this so you don’t smell, because when you smell, you become a social pariah.”

When to Use Fear in Emotional Marketing/Branding:

  • To drive leads
  • You have a specific and actionable solution
  • You have an easy, no stress way to buy

Happiness/Joy
What happens when we feel happy? You might be surprised.

It’s a fine line because if we’re too happy, we might not be motivated to purchase. But happiness DOES make us want to share. It seems good news travels fast. According to a study by Fractl these are the Top 5 emotions which drive viral content:

  • Amusement
  • Interest
  • Surprise
  • Happiness
  • Delight

When to Use Happiness in

in Emotional Marketing/Branding:

  • You want others to share your message
  • You want to build trust and loyalty
  • You can commit to happy content as a brand

Inclusion

One of our oldest motivations is the need to be part of a tribe, included in a group. For our earliest ancestors, it was a requirement for survival, today, that need is still a powerful motivator and when we have it, we feel safe which leads to loyalty.

When to Use Inclusion in

in Emotional Marketing/Branding

  • To attract or retain customers
  • When you can also utilize the fear of missing out
  • When you have the processes and platforms to create and sustain community

Anticipation

We’re hardwired to anticipate outcomes. We’re not always right, but we are always anticipating. You can use anticipation in a couple of different ways, to attract and retain customers.

Attracting customers with anticipation typically comes with a stimuli and an outcome. The faster the outcome, the more likely we are to repeat the stimuli. Once we’re hooked on the stimuli, the outcome frequency can become variable (you might have learned about Pavlov’s dog, this is the same theory). Gamification uses anticipation brilliantly.

Keeping customers with anticipation requires a product commitment (free sample with every order) or an anticipation experience connected to the product (why subscription boxes are so popular). You can create variables in the anticipation (products, frequency) that will actually heighten the anticipation.

Something else about anticipation: it DECREASES when we’re stressed and change can be stressful. This is why consistency in branding is so very important and why big changes for big brands are big-time risks. Can you think of a brand whose big change created major negative upheaval for them?

When to Use Anticipation in

in Emotional Marketing/Branding:

  • You have the willingness to keep the anticipation fresh
  • You want to build loyalty and repeat buyers
  • Your brand is elevated and/or lifestyle oriented

Expertise/Leadership

Making your customer feel like they’re the smartest/sexiest/most influential is a great way to get people’s attention. People love to be the most “something” of their friends and people will work to achieve this effect.

This marketing emotion is closely connected with our need for mastery and our innate value of time. Because of these two addition motivations, the harder you make it the more committed they will become to the process. It’s all about our emotional triggers again, we’re hardwired to commit more time to something we’ve already committed time to – this is the same theory behind the test drive and keeping you at the dealership during a car purchase.

Again, games do this quite well. Successful fitness trainers do this quite well.

When to Use Expertise and Leadership in your Marketing/Branding

  • When you have a unique process people can move through and see improvement
  • As a relationship builder, such as influencer marketing or tips and tricks your customers can use

Good luck and I look forward to hearing how you’re using emotion in your marketing and branding.