how does emotional marketing help my inbound strategy?

how many times has a feeling made you change your mind about something and you have acted differently from the way you were going to act? Emotions are what move people when it comes to making decisions. This great capacity that emotions have to make us act in one way or another is used by brands as a strategy to sell their products.

what are emotions?

Emotions have been studied for thousands of years, Aristotle did it and Darwin wrote a book about it in 1872: The expression of emotions in man and animals.

But the real pioneer in the study of emotions was Paul Ekman 100 years later, in 1972 he highlighted six basic emotions:

• Sadness
• Joy
• Disgust
• Disgust
• Surprise
• Fear
• Anger

Which ended up being 4 according to the University of Glasgow which was based on facial gestures and muscles used:

Sadness, happiness, anger and fear.

In marketing we could say that there are 5 important emotions:

1. Happiness: The goal of any person is always to achieve happiness, in whatever way. Awakening this emotion in customers accentuates the commitment they have with the brand, they humanise it more by feeling this positivism.
   
   
2. Sadness: This feeling implies the opposite of the previous one, but it is also effective for different campaigns. It is necessary to look for opposing feelings, so that there is a happy ending, often the story we are telling must begin with a sad story. A very clear example would be the lottery advert every year, which usually begins with a sad story to end with the explosion of happiness that winning the lottery implies. The aim of this is that you empathise and have the need to give away the happiness that the lottery implies, avoiding the sadness that, according to the advert, is implicit in not winning it.
   
   
3. Belonging to a group: Since human beings have always been social animals, this means that we need to feel part of something, to feel integrated into a group. Brands try to create communities within their brand, something very similar to brandlovers, who are proud to be part of the brand and the community that has formed around it.
   
   
4. Fear: You have to be very careful when using this emotion, misuse can provoke in the audience the opposite of what you want to achieve. You have to make the audience need to use the product to avoid that fear.
   
   
5. Anger: No, we are not referring to feeling anger for the product, but to the large number of campaigns that are based on some kind of injustice in order to mobilise the public. For example, if your cosmetics brand does not test on animals, campaigning that others do and that it is horrible, will make people decide to buy your brand before those that carry out acts that arouse the anger we were talking about.

what is emotional marketing?

It is a type of marketing that creates a link between the customer and the brand using emotions. What it tries to do is that the actions towards the brand's product are favourable through the feelings it arouses. In other words, emotional marketing is that which bases its strategy on selling a product or service through the emotional connection with the public. Awakening in the subconscious the feelings and emotions that we want them to feel. Thus, communication is bidirectional, technology gives this opportunity to brands. Returning to the previous example, if a brand advertises on its networks how bad it is to test on animals, stating that they do not perform such practices, what they get is that users share the injustice in their networks, thereby sharing the brand.

Characteristics of emotional marketing

1. Impact
   It causes more impact in our mind, causing a more lasting effect on us, we remember more the messages that penetrate us, because they manage to empathise with us, then we make the emotion or the problem our own. In this way we create an affective bond with the brand, which helps to create a good consumer feedback. Consumers want to be part of the brand, having a say in the products and services.
   
   
2. Interaction
   In social networks there is a great deal of interaction from users in the different communication channels in which marketing campaigns are displayed. This helps to raise brand awareness, as the more interaction, the better the positioning.
   
   
3. Image
   Provoking emotions in customers improves the brand's image, as it is humanising, empathising with your customers will bring you benefits.
   
   
4. Link
   You greatly improve the customer's bond with the brand, having involved emotions, the bond that is created in their mind is much greater than if there were no emotions.
   
   
5. Time
   A message that contains emotions lasts longer in time, the user remembers more easily a message that has been deeply rooted in him/her than one that does not produce any emotion.

Advantages of emotional marketing

1. Loyalty
   A closer relationship with the customer is achieved, emotions sell, a customer will prefer to buy again from a brand that has made him feel something.
   
   
2. Positioning
   As the brand is better remembered, its positioning within the sector improves thanks to the perception that customers have of it.
   
   
3. Recommendation
   Thanks to this good perception that customers have of the brand, they will recommend it and share these emotive messages through different channels.
   
   
4. Cost
   Digital marketing content tends to go viral faster than any other advertisement, so you save money on paid advertisements.
   
   
5. Positivism
   If your ad brings positivity to your customers, your brand will be remembered in a positive way. Associating your business with positive ideas is very beneficial for positioning and virality.

Emotional marketing is a strategy that you must follow if you want to captivate your audience, you should not overdo it with emotional messages, because your audience will end up not taking you seriously or will not see your emotional marketing as a novel strategy.

so start to make your audience fall in love with you from the depths of their hearts, dare to use emotional marketing!