Is Emotional Appeal Marketing a real thing or just dreamed up by marketing people, We have the answers using Neuroscience and examples
Leading you to a decision by your heart, not your head
As small business people, we don't often think about highbrow marketing concepts. The Facebook page just about stretches our talents and we get on with the job.
However, should we look further to improve our results?
Furthermore, do we see regular examples in our own paddock, examples we can all use?
Emotional branding. A wiki description and some examples.
| Shop Local | Does this impact on you |
| Support your city | Blasen promotion |
| Percentage to a charity | Seeking sympathy |
| Free delivery | This works on a saving basis |
| Rewards cards | Building points |
These are just a few I thought of in a quick note to dive deeper into the subject.
Neuromarketing blends science with sales
Neuromarketing blends neuroscience and marketing to help brands gauge the emotional resonance of their current and future marketing campaigns. To do this, companies like Immersion Neuroscience and Spark Neuro have developed technology that can gauge certain neurochemical and physiological responses, which both signal emotional engagement while consuming marketing content.
HubSpot
Not wanting to get all technical with you, but science says they can measure your response to an advertisement.
The more emotional you become, the higher the pressure to buy what they are selling.
This is great for big bucks spending, but what about small business owners, how can they use Neuroscience?
An Emotional example
As a member of Wealthy Affiliate, I am a regular contributor to their blog page. I often write about small business matters sometimes a precis of a blog like this.
My writing has a regular following and gets comments and page likes to make it all worthwhile.
However, I recently went through the process of moving house and all the problems associated with moving.
The blog I wrote was just to vent my frustrations and how they affected me personally. An emotional downpour if you like. I got more comments and likes than my technical writing. This got me thinking.
Omnimarketing
I did a blog on Omni marketing recently which you can read, but basically, it is concentrating your customer contact on a unique experience to keep them for life.
Asking myself is a feel-good experience and in fact, bordering on Neuromarketing because we are pulling on emotions.
You can read about advertising at the Super Bowl, where the least liked advertising had the highest user response in physical measurement. (Hub Spot)
The audience responded to what they considered an answer, not what they wanted.
The next question asked was if neuromarketing is legal or at best ethical. A satisfying answer was posted as:
The study, “Is Neuromarketing Ethical? Consumers Say Yes. Consumers Say No,” addresses ethical questions such as, “Will brands be able to influence buyer decisions too much?” and “Is neuromarketing manipulative?”
The answer was yes, it is ethical unless it was illegal or related to children.
An example of advertising enforcement and emotional appeal.
I walked past my local Supermarket today, a significant brand and one that is worldwide.
The sign out the front said :
“This store donates surplus fresh food to our community every week.”
It immediately pulled on my emotions as a great reason to shop there other than the competing brand a few meters away.
Being in Australia and the recent bushfires have been well publicized. Many businesses started promoting the fact that they were donating to the national bushfire appeal for funds. A great reason to shop with them. It had a reverse effect on me.
How does marketing jargon help you?
We shall start at the top. If you can use emotional appeal, you should. It works and shows your value as a citizen.
A reverse appeal is also happening in the current environment.
No plastic shopping bags are sold here.
We only use paper straws.
Bring your own coffee mug and help save the environment.
How about Vegan products plying on the emotions of shoppers.
It is a long list of emotional strings that are being used to ramp up your marketing.
FOMO on branding is an emotional appeal
The fear of missing out. An acronym was recently devised to label a buying pattern of a personal behavior trait.
In my day it was keeping up with the Jones's or even more simply Jealousy.
Now it is coined Loss Aversion and is being used in marketing at regular times.
Storytelling in marketing
This is becoming more commonplace and leads readers to a logical conclusion. The story will see a problem, agitate it, see what others are doing and then solve the issue. The hero wins again.
We use this in email marketing to get readers committed and to place emotional content into the subject.
Plus some of my blog content will go in the same direction.
Spending money on tracking emotions
It is not worth monitoring this for the small business world as there are no available funds and no reason for large investment returns.
However, knowing that it works and can produce results is an advantage to us all.
I have enjoyed this journey into the psychology of buying on emotions as I have often used it myself. Personally, I use FOMO when I can, for example:
” Did you know your competitor has had great success with this?”
Industries like yours are killing it!
Do you understand the cost of losing a customer?
It is not just one person, it is a family and their friends.”
Trying to use every skill I can.
Conclusion
We don't have to understand the complete working of the mind to arrive at our own version of Neuromarketing. Where you can use emotional, local persuasion or guilt to bring customers online. Plus keep them as lifetime customers.
Having it in your arsenal and applying it liberally to your marketing when needed can only help.
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