Did you know the most effective way to advertise to your audience is by triggering an emotion? Think the John Lewis Christmas adverts, WWF adverts, and Valentine’s day campaigns alike. The American motivation speaker, Zig Ziglar famously said that “people don’t buy things for logical reasons, they buy for emotional reasons”.

Five of the most recognisable emotions seen in advertising are happiness, nostalgia, fear, anger, and love.

Happiness – think jokes (“You should have gone to Specsavers”) and joyful situations (the cute kittens appearing from the biscuit packet).

Nostalgia – Take people back to their childhood with that favourite sweet they used to love, something family orientated (Dolmio sauce), or an ad that has been around forever (Toys ‘R’ Us).

Fear – Over the years there have been numerous road safety adverts to highlight the dangers of unsafe driving which aim to put fear into drivers to avoid those situations (hitting a little girl and her chance of survival based on your speed, the importance of wearing your seatbelt, etc.)

Anger – This doesn’t have to be a negative 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 prime example. The woman wears the perfume and she’s all loved up with the man, or the animal attraction of a man wearing Lynx!

But what about products that are a little more on the boring side? Or rather, can’t be jazzed up quite like a John Lewis advert. In order to gain new customers, retain them, and earn their loyalty, you’ve got to go the extra mile and make them ‘feel’ something and work to make them fall in love with your brand.

So how can you do this?

1)    Make sure you look sharp:

-       Even in today’s digital world, it’s often overlooked that your website is your essentially your digital shop front. We’re always saying to our clients that first impressions count and your website is no different, as it is often the first interaction a potential customer has with your business or brand. So, if it’s cluttered, looking tired, or takes ages to load – does this really give the right impression? Or rather does it evoke anger? If your site is difficult to use and isn’t looking its best, you could be memorable, for all  the wrong reasons! Appearance matters!

2)    Be consistent:

-       When it comes to branding, consistency is key. To attract a new customer, it takes time and repetition to go from the awareness stage to the brand recognition stage. It can take up to 15 times for someone to have seen something about your business in their peripheral vision before a customer really becomes aware of you. So, it’s important that all of these messages and channels are consistent so that you can move them along the funnel and get a customer to interact with you. Essentially by being consistent with your branding, people are more likely to remember you, then eventually trust you and interact with you.

3)    Create good content:

-       Interesting content is the top three reason people follow brands on social media. B2B companies with blogs generate 67% more leads per month on average than non-blogging firms. It’s all well and good looking good and being consistent, but just like dating, if you’re not putting yourself out there, how are people going to know you’re there? However, gone are the days when you can just throw a blog out there, for blogging sake. As we said previously, your website is often the first interaction a potential customer has with your brand. Customers (in both the B2B and B2C worlds) are increasingly carrying out more research on brands as part of their decision-making process.  This includes visiting a brands blog page to see what kind of information you are putting out there. Again, just like dating, you need to impress your potential customer by going the extra mile. This means writing engaging, educational, and informative content.

4)    Encourage customer feedback:

-       The classic statistic, that if someone receives bad service, they’re likely to on average to tell 11 people about it and it’s all too true, isn’t it? However, have you heard that if a customer gets their issue resolved, that they tell on average 4-6 people? It’s certainly a better story to put out there and is a way to influence the word of mouth around your business. Just like in any normal scenario, customers want to be spoken to like real people and if a mistake has been made and it can be resolved efficiently, you are much more likely to retain a happy customer.

Interested in knowing more? Then get in touch with us directly at hello@creativepod.com or you can follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.