Executive summary

• Emotional marketing is a type of marketing that targets consumer emotions using emotional elements in its messaging to increase its impact on consumers.
• Benefits of this form of marketing include stronger connections with consumers, increased brand loyalty, and greater customer engagement.
• Emotional marketing campaigns should have a clear target audience, specify emotions to target, and select channels for outreach.
• To implement emotional marketing, brands should use storytelling, leverage visual elements, and incorporate user-generated content.

Creating an Emotional Marketing Strategy

Emotions play an integral role in a successful marketing strategy, as they’re a driving force in buyer decision-making. By incorporating emotions into a marketing strategy, brands can build messaging that resonates while creating more meaningful, genuine connections with their audiences.

Appealing to emotions allows brands to humanize themselves, become more memorable, and—because emotions are so influential on our decisions—encourage consumers to act. Understanding how to implement an emotional marketing strategy will increase the impact of your messaging and build a loyal following for your brand. However, it’s important to utilize the right strategies to ensure you can make the most of your marketing efforts.

What Is Emotional Marketing?

Emotional marketing is the use of messaging and advertising efforts that evoke emotion amongst consumers with the goal of developing a deeper connection and encouraging action. Generally, emotional marketing campaigns focus on one specific emotion to narrow down the scope and really drive it home.

Some common emotions that brands can target include:

• Happiness
• Sadness
• Fear
• Surprise
• Hope
• Excitement
• Nostalgia
• Empathy

Emotional marketing differs from traditional marketing efforts in that it works to evoke specific emotions to influence and persuade consumers, rather than using factual information and statistics. By eliciting emotional responses, this approach is associated with stronger brand engagement and loyalty compared to traditional marketing.

The Benefits of Emotional Marketing

Emotional marketing offers a wide array of benefits for brands looking to elevate their outreach efforts. The following are all great reasons to adapt your communications to incorporate more emotions.

Stronger connections with consumers

Leading with emotions allows you to build firmer connections with your consumers. Emotions humanize a brand, making consumers feel like they’re interacting with real people rather than some faceless entity. As a result, they’ll feel more connected to your brand and interact more in the future.

This foundational benefit leads to many other opportunities. Stronger connections mean that there’s a greater chance they’ll remember your product or service in the future. When they need something your brand can fulfill, or want to inspire the emotion your brand invokes, they’ll be more likely to turn to your product.

Increased brand loyalty & advocacy

Brand loyalty and advocacy means that consumers are likely to speak on your brand and encourage others to also purchase from you. Emotional connections bring improved relationships between customers and brands—customers want to know a brand is there for them when they need it.

In return, customers give back to the brand by advocating for it to others and preaching the benefits of its products and services to their friends. This process is crucial for brands, as 88% of consumers in one report said that they most trust endorsements from someone they know over messaging from a brand itself.

Emotional marketing that appeals to your target audience makes them feel like they’re a part of something and encourages them to influence others, too. They become compelled to want to share their experience with their friends and family, who could become consumers in the future as well.

Driving customer engagement and purchasing decisions

Emotions play an important role in our actions, and they drive us to make decisions, especially in influencing our purchasing decisions. By leading marketing efforts with emotions, brands can influence emotional engagement in brand activations and everyday interactions.

For example, if proceeds from a product go to a social cause, and that cause resonates with consumers emotionally, they are more likely to make that purchase. Brands can play off this mechanism to enhance customer emotional engagement in a brand while encouraging them to act.

Components of an Emotional Marketing Strategy

Building an effective emotional marketing strategy requires a thoughtful approach consisting of several key elements that advance its impact. The following components are crucial:

1. Identify your target audience’s emotional triggers

Different target audiences have different emotional triggers—some consumers are driven by a fear of missing out, others are looking for products that spark joy, others want comfort or belonging, and the list goes on.

Understanding your audience’s emotional triggers will help you improve both your product and marketing efforts. The only way to determine the best triggers is to learn about your audience.

You can learn more about what captures your target audience emotionally by:

• Tracking engagement with different types of content
• Monitoring social media interactions
• A/B testing different types of content
• Social media listening
• Conducting focus groups

2. Choose the right emotions to evoke in your marketing

Once you know what emotions will hit home for your audience, it’s time to choose which ones to use in your marketing strategy. Make sure the emotions you choose to appeal to are relevant to the product or service you’re selling.

Remember also that emotions are more complex than just “happiness” or “sadness”. You may also be able to target more specific emotional responses, like nostalgia or a fear of missing out. Regardless, it’s a good idea to be clear in your emotions and hone in on one over targeting multiple.

For example, if you’re selling fashion styles based on those that were trendy a few decades ago, you’ll likely want to evoke emotions of nostalgia in your marketing. Meanwhile, if you’re selling a product or service that will save consumers time in their chores or work tasks, you may want to evoke feelings of relief to inspire them to buy it.

3. Craft a brand story that resonates with the specific emotions

Crafting a brand story is another helpful element in driving home your emotional marketing strategy. This story should cover your brand’s origins, mission, and purpose, and you should make the story resonate with your audience based on audience analysis and the emotions you aim to target.

A brand story gives consumers a foundation for understanding who you are—it should also tie into the emotions you want to highlight in your overall emotional marketing strategy. For example, a brand story can talk about how the brand originated to solve a social problem or environmental issue and evoke emotions of hope or inspiration among their audience.

4. Select appropriate channels for emotional communication

Once you’ve determined your target emotion, you must choose the appropriate channels for communicating it. Certain channels can make it easier than others. For example, channels that allow video content can more powerfully evoke emotion than short-form social media content.

The best channels for embracing emotional marketing include:

• Social media – Social media platforms like Instagram and Facebook are great for emotional marketing. With their visual elements and interactive opportunities, they provide brands the opportunity to evoke emotions and engage with their audience.
• Video platforms – Video allows brands to blend visual elements with emotional appeals, so using platforms like YouTube and TikTok offers extensive potential.
• In-person – Brand activations, like in-person events and webinars, can focus on targeting emotions for brands to build connections with their audiences.
• Email marketing– Email marketing can use visual elements, emotional storytelling, and personalized content to appeal to emotions.

Ultimately, there is no absolute correct answer to which channel you should use. The right choice depends on your campaign and which medium you feel would best convey your message and target the emotions you’re hoping to influence. Building a cross-channel marketing plan that incorporates emotion can go a long way toward maximizing your campaign.

Strategies for Implementing Emotional Marketing

Putting this approach into action takes some careful consideration to ensure that the messaging resonates. Brands can utilize the following strategies to implement and elevate their emotional marketing strategy.

Use storytelling to evoke emotions

Storytelling is one of the oldest arts, and humans have a natural interest in stories. Using storytelling in marketing can evoke emotions by making it easier to conceptualize them for consumers to digest.

For example, explaining the purpose of a product may not fully resonate with a consumer, but telling the story behind how you created the product to solve a problem can make the story more compelling and generate empathy. Storytelling is not only more engaging, but it also makes the concept more realistic and easier to grasp by providing tangible evidence.

In your marketing efforts, consider discussing the origin story behind why a product or service is meaningful or how the product or service has changed someone’s life for the better.

Leverage visual elements to enhance emotional appeal

Storytelling is one thing, but if you can boost your storytelling with imagery, you can make your message even more impactful and more likely to resonate. Visual elements like videos, imagery, and charts can amplify the emotion and supporting information while capturing attention.

Other elements like colors, actors expressing emotion, and certain imagery help to magnify the emotional response and make it more relatable. For example, the imagery in perfume and cologne commercials helps to enhance the emotion they portray. The elegance of the images encourages you to feel entranced, providing a sense of luxury and demonstrating the confidence you could feel if you purchased it.

In another example, seeing a commercial of excited people at a party while sharing a snack product can invoke feelings of happiness and belonging, highlighting that you could enjoy the same emotions if you bought the product.

Be sure to use strategic emotional elements and consider how they speak to the product you are trying to sell.

Incorporate user-generated content to foster a sense of authenticity

User-generated content (UGC) is a type of content created by individuals who have actually used a product. UGC is often seen as more trustworthy than other forms of content—it gives off the feeling of a real, relatable person sharing their thoughts with you rather than a faceless brand pushing a product.

A staggering 82% of consumers say that they’re more likely to buy a product from a brand if the marketing includes UGC. This content can include video reviews or unboxing videos of the product and how it works.

UGC is a great supplement to your emotional marketing efforts as it makes your brand more trustworthy and easier to connect with by demonstrating authenticity and transparency.

Case Studies

Many brands use emotional marketing in their outreach strategies to build new connections already. The following case studies demonstrate the power of emotional marketing.

Nike

Nike’s marketing demonstrates the pinnacle of emotional marketing, leading a majority of their campaigns with emotion. Nike’s campaigns aim to inspire people, telling the stories of athletes who have overcome adversity to chase their dreams of playing their dream sport.

The fitness apparel brand takes these stories of inspiration, encouraging people to “Find their Greatness” or “Just Do It”. These campaigns not only motivate people to buy Nike’s products in pursuit of their own dreams, but they also establish an emotional connection with customers so they feel more connected to the brand.

Altogether, Nike’s emotional campaigns have been successful in developing a loyal following of fellow athletes who empathize with the experience of working against the odds to chase their dreams. They know they can turn to Nike and its products to support them on their journey.

Kennedy Space Center

Kennedy Space Center was known for its historic space shuttle launches, but after the program ended in 2011, visitation dropped. Fortunately, there was still plenty that this functioning NASA facility had to offer.

PETERMAYER helped build an emotional marketing campaign to invoke emotion and show potential visitors what they were missing out on. The campaign targeted awe and excitement, showing how “looking up” can offer relief from the boredom of being stuck to a cell phone.

By incorporating visual elements that parallel staring at a phone screen with looking up and witnessing a space launch, this campaign sparked curiosity and wonder. The emotional messaging left consumers feeling compelled and engaged.

As a result of this emotional marketing campaign, Kennedy Space Center saw a 49% increase in visitors over five years, 121 million impressions, and $5.7 million in attributable revenue to the campaign since launching.

Create a Successful Emotional Marketing Strategy

Emotional marketing is a compelling approach that generates stronger connections with consumers and encourages better relationships with your brand. Brands can capitalize on emotional marketing by using strategies like incorporating captivating imagery, choosing the right emotions for their target audience, and creating a memorable brand story.

At PETERMAYER, we help brands generate campaigns that captivate audiences by targeting the right emotions. We use data-driven methods to learn more about the target audiences and build a meaningful campaign that resonates. Our efforts unleash the inherent joy in the brands we work with to unlock moments that people crave and drive engagement.

Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you develop an emotional marketing campaign that pulls in and captivates consumers.

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