Haven’t we all shed a tear watching a sad movie? Lost our cool in a frustrating situation? Had a hearty laugh at a funny joke? Ever wondered why?
It’s a natural human response and our emotions are at play here. It is, after all, what makes us truly human.
More often than not, our feelings and emotions dictate our responses to the many situations around us, and we tend to connect more when we associate a particular emotion with something.
Marc Gobé, the author of the book Emotional Branding, believed this to be a creative approach to marketing. He said, “Consumers don’t remember messages, they remember moments”.
Come to think of it, it’s true! An ad that talks to us directly or triggers a particular emotion in us is more likely to leave a mark in our memory than an ad that simply rambles on about features and qualities.
This is called emotional branding.
Now if you’re not familiar with this term, then this blog is the perfect place to learn all about it! Here we will discuss what emotional branding is, why it is beneficial and how you can apply this to your business.
Ready to dive into this blog? Let’s go!
What is Emotional Branding?
Emotional branding is a marketing strategy that uses the consumer’s emotions to establish a personal relationship between the brand and the consumer.
Here, your brand focuses on a single emotion, like joy, anger, sadness, etc. in order to elicit a response from the consumer.
In essence, emotional branding is all about provoking the customer’s emotions to connect with them on a personal level so that they notice, remember, share, and buy your products and services.
Is this really beneficial to your business, you ask? Let’s find out!
Benefits of Emotional Branding
With emotional branding, you are evoking a range of emotions and feelings in your consumers that prompt them to take action that benefits your business.
But how exactly does this benefit your business? Take a look:
1. Creates a Deep Connection
Humans are emotional beings and it reflects a lot in our day-to-day life and decisions. By invoking emotions from your consumers, you not only influence their daily decisions but also create a deep and personal connection with them.
For example, New York Life Insurance appeals to the hearts of consumers by eliciting feelings of love and compassion and urging them to take action for the good of their families through their “Love Takes Action” commercial. This prompts people to consider life insurance for their loved ones.
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2. Helps Stand Out From Competitors
Many brands tend to focus on making themselves superior to their competitors by offering multiple features and competitive pricing, and it often lacks a sense of human touch to it. With emotional branding, you humanize your approach by including real people in your campaign, addressing social issues, and other strategies to establish a personal touch. This helps you stand out and differentiate your brand from your competitors.
For example, the “Like a Girl” campaign by the brand Always helped bring attention to the difficulties women face while playing sports and encouraged them to share their stories. This helped address a social issue while adding a personal touch, which helped them stand out from their competitors.
3. Establishes Brand Loyalty
Emotions tend to create a long-lasting impact on your consumers, especially if your ideas and values match theirs. This creates a sense of familiarity and connection that will help establish a sense of trust. Therefore, the more your consumers connect with your brand, the more likely they are to stick with your brand for future purchases.
For example, Starbucks’ “Meet at Starbucks” campaign in collaboration with the dating app, Match helped create emotional ties between people, thereby subconsciously strengthening customers’ loyalty towards the brand.
4. Builds Brand Recognition
When your brand manages to evoke certain emotions in your consumers, it increases the chances of them remembering and recalling your brand at other times. This helps build and improve your brand recognition because the emotional appeal that you create with emotional branding influences their decisions while looking to make a purchase in the future.
For example, Nike used its slogan “Just Do it” to create a campaign that featured professional and amateur athletes talking about their accomplishments and the emotions they feel as they exercise. This inspired positive feelings in the consumers and helped them recognize Nike as a brand they associate with sports.
Now that you know the different benefits of employing emotional branding, let’s take a look at how to create an emotional branding strategy!
Read more: Brand Authenticity: Definition, Importance & Tips To Build It!
How to Create an Emotional Branding Strategy?
1. Know Your Audience
The first and most crucial step in any kind of marketing is to know your audience. So before jumping straight to emotional branding strategies, take the time to research your target audience, and their needs and wants.
Ask yourself to whom you are aiming to market your products and services and what kind of reaction you want from them. Try to target one emotion that resonates with their dreams and desires to elicit the best response from them which is also beneficial to your brand as well.
Read more: Unique Selling Proposition: What is it & How to Create Your Own?
2. Bring Out Your Human Side
Once you get to know your audience, ask yourself – does your audience know you?
To your audience or potential customers, you are just another business amongst the thousands of other ones and they barely have any connection with you. Here is where emotional branding helps you out by bringing out the human side of your business.
Create content that talks about the people who work for you and focus heavily on customer service. Always show your enthusiasm towards the customers’ needs and wants.
Connect with your customers on an emphatical and emotional level. Listen to them carefully, understand their issues and problems, show them you are invested and provide effective solutions. All of this helps create a bond that will make your brand your consumers’ first choice.
3. Tell Authentic Stories
Stories connect people, that’s why emotional branding and storytelling are complementary to each other. So it’s important that you resonate and empathize with your consumers.
You can do this by sharing stories about your vulnerabilities and adversities and how you overcame them instead of portraying a perfect image of your brand.
Be passionate while telling your brand stories. Make sure they are relatable and empathize with your customers’ stories and needs.
Share real testimonials of previous customers’ experience with your brand and how it has helped them. This helps your potential customers build trust and loyalty towards your brand.
4. Applying Ethos, Pathos, and Logos
The Greek philosopher Aristotle formulated an idea of persuasion, in which he says that in order to sell emotional change to somebody, you need to give them ethos or ethical arguments, pathos or sentimental arguments, and logos or logical arguments.
By applying this technique, you are not only adding an emotional factor to your communication but also an ethical and logical mind as well.
Ethos requires you to appeal to credibility and ethics to connect with the minds of your consumers. This can be done through design elements, illustrations, using color psychology, and so on.
Pathos requires you to appeal to empathy. This can be done by creating a sense of belonging to motivate customers to take action.
Logos requires you to appeal to logic and reason. This can be done by showcasing statistics and showing how your product can benefit your customers.
5. Customize
No one likes an auto-generated message. In fact, it can even be annoying. That’s why it is necessary to create an emotional connection with your potential customer through personalization or customization.
Personalize your communication with your potential and current customers by incorporating whatever information that you have about them. This can include their past purchases, birthdays, favorite products, or other demographic data like their name, age, gender, etc.
6. Create a Community
People always want to be a part of something that often is beyond or greater than themselves. They love to feel connected or associated with a cause, especially if it is one that they strongly feel about.
Since emotional branding is all about provoking the emotions of your customers, you can use it to establish a movement or create a community around a cause that gives back to society.
The moment your consumers feel that they are a part of the goodwill by simply associating themselves with your brand, the more likely to contribute to your brand and its cause.
So it is crucial that you are aware and educated about all the social, political, environmental, and economic issues relevant in the society so that you can offer something more than just your products. This not only shows that your business is willing to lend a helping hand but also creates a sense of trust and camaraderie in your consumers.
7. Use the Right Language
While much importance is placed on what brand values and emotions need to connect with your audience, it is equally crucial to focus on how that is being conveyed.
Use the appropriate language to strike the right chords with your consumer. Make sure that you are addressing the customer like you are directly talking to them to create a better connection. Use attractive words and phrases that capture attention easily.
You also need to keep with the ever-changing approach to communication, so make sure that you employ visual elements like emojis, GIFs, stickers, memes, and more to attract the attention of your younger audiences.
The better people understand what your brand is trying to convey, the more effective it is going to be.
8. Nurture Long-Term Customer Relationships
Time and again, we have emphasized the importance of establishing a connection between your brand and your customers. But merely establishing a connection is not enough, you need to put in work and ensure that you nurture the relationship over time.
Foster your customer relationship even after the purchase ends. Communicate regularly with your customers and their needs, and take special care to address any problem they have, and provide excellent after-sales customer service.
By following these steps, you are bound to hit the right notes with your consumers and create a long-lasting impact on them, thus leading to a strong relationship that will benefit your brand in every way possible.
Conclusion
With that, we come to the end of this blog and we believe that we have given you everything you need to know to fully equip you to start your own emotional branding strategy for your business.
Because when done right, emotional branding can effectively boost your brand story to the next level and ensure that your brand is at the top of its game, irrespective of whether you have big or small competition.
Get the emotion part right and the rest will just fall into place as it should!
Now go out there and stir some emotions! Good luck!
Further reads:
12 Marketing Goals You Must Include In Your Plan!
8 Different Types of Branding Strategies (With Examples)
Target Audience: What is it and How to Find them? (Steps Included)
How Team Communication Tools Can Empower Teams & Amp Up Productivity?
Social Proof: 8 Ways to Use it to Get More Sales!
Collaboration Strategy: Definition, Benefits & Process!
What is UX Strategy? A Complete Guide To Success!
How To Market To Gen Z The Right Way in 2023?
