Tag Archive for: communication strategy
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.
The Communication Strategy Everyone Will Thank You For.
We’re inundated with messages every day. As communicators, it’s up to us to have some empathy for our audience, whether that audience is the press, an employee, a customer, or an investor.
Yet, this single communications strategy I’m about to share with you is so simple, so basic, you’ll wonder why you’re not doing it already.
Before we go any further, let me ask you, which would you rather be:
A product or a movement
A cause or a movement?
An idea or a movement?
If you don’t care, I’ll save you-you can stop reading right now.
If you want to be a movement, it’s time to re-frame your thinking.
If you’re going to have a movement that matters, you’re going to need people to get on your side.
PEOPLE.
Not Twitter accounts, not Instagram followers, not Facebook likes.
These are vanity metrics that provide little insight into the passion and interest people have in your brand, product, or personality.
Are You Really Ready?
If you’re ready, you’ll re-frame your thinking.
If you re-frame your thinking, it will change everything.
So get ready…
The world is crowded now with communicators, marketers, messengers, and “me, me, me.”
Some days it’s soul-sucking.
It’s why everyone who uses social networking says brands ruin everything.
And yet…people WANT to receive messages, they just want messages tailored to them.
One of the reasons digital marketing is so powerful is that it creates a give and take in the relationship.
It provides an opportunity for the customer, the reader to think about their favorite subject for a moment: them.
But here’s the rub:
It takes strategy, focus and creativity to create content that your consumer wants to see.
So, please.
As you review your communication goals and communication strategy, stop for one moment and think about the reader, whether they’re a customer, a client, an investor, or an internal employee.
Make it about them.
That single phrase is the one thing so many brand communicators ignore.
Why? Because it takes serious work to “Make it about them.”
It means getting serious about audience identification.
It means getting serious about your brand, it’s voice and how it relates to the audience.
It means diving in on messaging and strategic choices in advertising.
It means actually creating a relationship and even (GASP) an in-person relationship with your customer or client.
It means, communication and branding for the long haul, not some flash-in-the-pan-make-it-go-viral-I-need-some-vanity-numbers-now kind of campaign.
And while we’re thinking about it, let’s consider language and what it says about our strategy.
If you’re saying you’ll “use influencers,” do you think you’re thinking about it from the “All About Them” standpoint?
If you’re talking about how you’ll “promote” your message, event, or idea, does that sound like you’re getting ready to make it interesting to others?
If you’re talking to a PR agency, a strategist or a social media consultant who is using words like “promote” and “use” you really must ask yourself if you’ll have an opportunity for a customer relationship.
I still see and hear this language every day on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, everywhere.
It’s gotten to where my eyes glaze over.
Guess what? So does everyone else’s.
Let’s step it up, together.
We can do this.
We can make what you have to say interesting and relevant to the right people at the right time.
Now What?
Here’s my communication strategy challenge to you.
Go check your last 10 social posts.
See how many times you used the words “we, us, or I.”
How much of your content was about the consumer?
How much of your content was strategically shared to reinforce or create relationships?
Is there anything there that would make someone curious?
Is there anything at ALL that makes people feel ANYTHING?
How do YOU make people feel?
If you make them feel ANYTHING you’re miles ahead.
If you make them feel stronger, smarter, special, you’re really hitting on something.
If you made them terrified, scared, outraged, you’re really hitting on something.
People rarely forget how you made them feel.
But YOU’RE utterly forgettable when you make them feel nothing.
Digital branding and marketing is a long game, with peaks at appropriate times.
But always it surrounds emotion.
Regardless of the movement you’re trying to start, start with the idea that “you” are not necessarily interesting.
What’s interesting to people is what they do with “you.”
How you make them laugh or think.
How you make their lives easier, better, or richer.
Here’s another reason to re-frame your thinking: it takes discipline and thought to create content that makes people pause.
That’s why so few marketers do it.
So while everyone else is “zigging” go ahead and “zag.” and watch how it changes the way people respond to your brand or product.
That is all.
