The modern drama takes place in every local store, where people struggle to decide: to buy or not to buy. For some of us, it might seem such a senseless doubt, till we remember the last thing we wasted/spend money on without any need.
What happened to the society, that controlling your wishes and knowing your needs is so vital? Since people started to live in the society of prosperity, the necessity to buy only by need disappeared. Now we can decide, whether we need the thing we want, or just want it. A variety of products in the market spawns a big question mark over the consumers head and it confuses.
Great spectrum of products made it difficult to facilitate people’s choice in their rational field of thinking. The reason is the products, that we consume to satisfy our natural needs diverse in their appearance mostly, not functionality. That is why to convince people with rational arguments is not always productive. So the emotional marketing appeared.
Basically, emotional marketing is a moving from influencing rational thinking to influencing emotions. In a more wide sense, emotional marketing helps to prove that consumer’s desire is a consumer’s need.
Emotional marketing around the globe
Lot’s of world-known brands use ads focused on the emotions. Feelings are an international language, that needs no translation to understand what do you mean. And those ads obviously bear fruits. In terms of emotions, let’s just take a look at what we are talking about:
Google India — Reunion
A short story about an Indian family, the elder member of which is receiving a birthday present from his granddaughter. She uses Google Search Engine to unite grandfather’s friends, that were separated since 1947 India-Pakistan partition. A warm plot about family values connected with technologies and their usefulness.
Apple
It is easier to find an aborigine tribe rather than a person, who don’t know about Apple. Well, even some aborigine tribes know Apple products, but anyway. Apple commercial represents a higher level of influence on people’s emotions. Definitely, what makes you think a little about family values and maybe with Apple products? Who knows.
Nike
We are all familiar with heroic Nike advertisement, inspiring people to be more purposeful, more motivated. Series of those pictures include some piece of action moments or just a photo of a sportsman. Quotations used there are usually short and catchy, but with deep sense, not losing the charm of a phrase.
Think or feel?
Emotions that trigger to purchase goods may be different. That means not only positive and joyful feelings can serve as a trigger. There is no need to make people depressed either, but shopping is a well-known way to overcome melancholy and sadness. And you should take it into account. Another branch where emotions push us to buy is a situation when the product itself is less valuable than feelings we experience. That is connected with most places we visit, such as restaurants, cafes, cinemas, etc. The feeling of care or respect has an enormous impact on the client when he/she is making a decision.
There are also kinds of emotional reaction, that may seem a little bit unfair. Causing consumers to feel ashamed or guilty can be risky. But, what works can’t be ignored. The idea is the following — advertising is creating an object of sympathy, that makes a person feel guilty or responsible for it. Let’s look at the example:
For emotional reaction, nothing can be better than a live contact. Because touch is a natural mechanism to awake emotional reaction. Attempts to make the customer “feel” the subject without touching it in the real world were long before the computer age. A pretty old school “scratch and sniff” technique pages in the magazines. The technology existed a long time ago and generally was used for sniffing the scent of the perfumes. These days scratch and sniff are not that popular. Nevertheless, there are a lot of “analogues” in the modern world based on other senses.
Touching the unreal
So what about the digital era? How can we make our web pages awake emotions? Until we don’t have any “sprayers” of smells in our computers, let’s try to work with visual and psychological aspects.
Let’s start with the basics. There is one important thing you have to remember. Nearly half of the people take emotional decision purchasing the products. That means, that for approximately 50% percent of your auditory rational argumentation will not be enough. Instead of encircling your products with frightening massive descriptions, it is better to show them up.
Different 3D viewers allow your customer to look at the product from all the angles. Extensions like WooCommerce 360º Image are extremely helpful in that.
Turning and looking at the product from all the sides, the client is probably doing the same as “trying out” his new car before buying. It is not comparable to the real experience, but it is a good analogue to make the person “feel” the product, not “think” about it.
Mercedes on their site proposes to try 360º video to check their automobiles from all the angles.
https://www.mercedes-benz.com/en/mercedes-benz/vehicles/passenger-cars/amg-gt/360-video-of-the-mercedes-amg-gt-s-video/
Similar to the previous feature, it is also useful to place some usual video material on the page. A picture is worth a thousand words. A video is worth a thousand pictures.
https://wordpress.org/plugins/woocommerce-html5-video/ — simple extension for WooCommerce. Allows you to embed the video from YouTube, Vimeo, Viddler, etc. Or load your own video in MP4, WebM or Ogg formats.
Moving pictures
Videos are extremely important. They can impact 2 senses at a time. And they also stimulate the imagination of the viewer, which may positively influence his or her decision.
Another way, that can help to awake some emotions of your customers, are web services like virtual fitting rooms. The e-commerce is a lottery for buying clothes. You can’t be sure how it looks like without fitting it. That is virtual fitting rooms can be also extremely beneficial.
Web services like Dressy are compatible with most of the well-known platforms. What it does is helps you to fit the clothes you want, match the size and compare different looks. It always arises a strong emotional reaction, when a person can see himself in the piece of clothing.
Here is a short video about the work of a service:
As a cherry on a top, never forget to surround your products with a pleasant atmosphere. You can achieve the “right spirit” on the page installing a stylish theme. The background can be something to cause an emotional effect, like on the InkTank. But that should not be your only tool in the emotional marketing of your product.
Do you believe in emotional marketing? Have you ever experienced the direct influence of emotions on your decisions to buy the product? Which approaches do you use in your own promotion campaigns?