How important are emotions in marketing?

SenseiSteve

HD Moderator
Staff member
I don’t care if you’re selling dedicated servers, automotive tires, furniture or clothing, there’s one common ingredient to converting more prospects and that’s by integrating emotion into your marketing efforts.

Think about this. How do you engage anyone in conversation and keep them interested? You tell stories that evoke emotion! The key here is that positive emotions propel positive reactions.

What are hooks and how to use them

Very early in my sales training classes, I was told that to be a champion sales representative, you had to use what are called hooks, ending each sentence with a query that would force a yes answer. These hooks could be simple little queries like, “Everyone likes to save money at the gas pump, don’t they?” Who is going to say no? After a number of sentences in a conversation where you invoke multiple yes answers, you go for the kill and close with the BIG yes query.

The theory was that by repeating yes over and over, you set your prospect’s frame of mind to continue replying with a yes. Does that work in the real world? Absolutely! Tie those hooks to emotions and I guarantee you’ll outperform your peers AND competitors in every measurement that counts, including gross revenue and net profit.

Hot buttons – what are they?

When a prospect expresses an interest in your product or service, do you immediately go into your elevator pitch or start listing every feature you think they may be interested in, or do you ask questions to determine their hot buttons?

I know everyone has heard the term hot buttons, but what are they really? They’re emotions like frustration, ego and needs. Uncovering these helps you to shape your line of reasoning, asking just the right questions, with emotional hooks that specifically address the prospect.

What about using emotion strategies on websites?

Appealing to your visitors’ emotions on your website touches them in ways that simply listing features and benefits cannot do. For example, what attracts visitors to recipe sites? Is it the list of ingredients or the directions on how to prepare them? Neither.

There are millions of recipes online on everything from stewed tomatoes to cream cheese cherry pies, but I don’t know of anyone who gets turned on by the directions. When you’re hungry for something sweet (why else would you be looking at a recipe of an apple tart online), a great image of that dessert could induce hunger pains that won’t go away until you’ve made that exact tart in your kitchen.

Would a video help?

If a picture is worth a 1000 words, how much is a video worth? Would a video of the chef taking that tart out of the oven, putting it on a plate and serving it to a member of the audience, and then that member saying, “Wow, this is the best apple tart I’ve ever tasted. The crust is fluffy; the apples are tart but sweet in just the right proportion. Great job!” entice a viewer to want to know how to make that in their own kitchen? Of course it would!

Emotions drive what everyone buys

Successful marketing strategies incorporate psychological triggers. It’s been said that happiness induces people to share. I know what you’re thinking though. You’re thinking, “How could I possibly apply this strategy to a dishwasher, a service contract, a dedicated server or a recliner?” I assure you it’s done every day on thousands of commercials that we all watch.

Your thoughts ...
 
I would agree. Emotions make people acting in the way they were not going to. But when it comes to the advertising I think that emotions should be positive on the all stages: stage of making decision, purchaising service or product and after purchase.
Great marketing plan should be a kind of masterpiece.
 
In any business, marketing is critical. Marketing success is entirely dependent on your plan; many businesses pay for AdWords, Facebook advertising, and other social media platforms in order to generate leads, while many organisations work organically to improve their lead generation. I completely agree that happy emotions may help you grow your company if you utilise them in the right way.
 
I do agree, almost all human decisions are based on a combination of emotion and logic, and in a lot of cases the emotional factors turn out to be the bigger and deciding ones.

I think it does depend a bit on the market and the product though, someone is more likely to buy hosting for a hobby blog based on the emotional feel of the website that is selling it, but a CTO or Project Manager making a bigger infrastructure purchasing decision is going to look at pricing, specs, and performance reviews a lot more rather than relying purely on a feeling.
 
Emotion is one of the biggest selling points ever... even more so than the product itself. From the words on the page, the colors that surround it, and even the font choices - they all play a part. I'm not the guy to go bashing Comic Sans, but there's a time and a place for that font, and it's not on a lawyer's website!

We have a rule in our company, if the client doesn't swear, we can't work with them. Sounds odd right? Well, we're in marketing, and it's either black or white - you're getting results or you're not. We don't have time to sugarcoat feelings, and it's actually a HUGE selling point in our business.

Now I'm not saying that people can berate each other, but being able to say "what the F is this" and "why did this S happen" - there's a comfort level that our clients know we're on their team and can have a clear and honest, no filter, conversation.

It's not for everyone, but it works for us. We've worked with everything from Plumbers to a Seminary School, and with a group of Catholic Priests through a different organization. You think a sailor swears? Have a candid conversation with a group of clergymen :)

Video - awesome stuff. I think the best thing that could have come out of the COVID stuff is so many people being familiar with Zoom and meeting software. We no longer have to schedule in-person meetings and tie up hours of prep and cleaning office space etc. Now we kick on the video and off we go. YouTube and Facebook Live is another avenue where you can be more real with people, and genuine passion comes across clearly.

As far as video on a website explaining things - if it makes sense to have it, then do it! But if it's 30 seconds of an AC Fan blowing and making noise, it's probably better to just take a picture and say "here's your problem, and our guys can fix it" :)
 
if it makes sense to have it, then do it! But if it's 30 seconds of an AC Fan blowing and making noise, it's probably better to just take a picture and.....
So agree with this!

Video for the sake of having a video where it serves no purposed and imparts no information can be really irritating.
 
Your thoughts ...
There is a quote - "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled". So pushing all that marketing BS is fairly easy. It only gets harder when you determine to push larger amounts than your rivals do. Sooner or later we arrive at the point, where marketing becomes propaganda and brand becomes a religion. Both these expressions are based on emotions, and both are BS anyway.
 
There is a quote - "It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they have been fooled". So pushing all that marketing BS is fairly easy. It only gets harder when you determine to push larger amounts than your rivals do. Sooner or later we arrive at the point, where marketing becomes propaganda and brand becomes a religion. Both these expressions are based on emotions, and both are BS anyway.
So in what context are those BS? Surely, Kleenex captured the market on branding of their tissues. In dollars, what do you envision is the worth of that brand?

There are plenty of other examples.
 
So in what context are those BS?
I mean propaganda and religion.

Everyone defines what is BS in the context of this own experience. Is marketing a game? Clearly. Are you fine if anyone is playing with your emotions? Hardly. I personally put all the things which tend to benefit from tricking human emotions like propaganda, religion and marketing, in the same trashcan. Yet I'm not invincible, as we are all. At this stage of human brain evolution your mentioned psychological triggers work well, so of course they will be used by anyone, who is willing to make profits, be it a sect or a toilet paper producer. It's not forbidden anyway. All I wanted to say, is that humanity must move forward from being animals.
 
I personally put all the things which tend to benefit from tricking human emotions like propaganda, religion and marketing, in the same trashcan.

If you take away all of the things that you are talking about along with everything else that is designed to 'trick' or influence us emotionally then every company website would be a white page with black text that is just a list of facts, specifications, and prices.

We all want to be appealed to emotionally, not manipulated of course, but to have our emotions stimulated and feel that our purchasing decisions fit with the things that we believe in.

As for religion and propaganda, I think it's dangerous to dismiss them as BS. I have no religious faith of any kind, but billions of people do seem to genuinely believe in something, and that faith actively does enable them to deal with and get through situations that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
 
We all want to be appealed to emotionally, not manipulated of course, but to have our emotions stimulated and feel that our purchasing decisions fit with the things that we believe in.
That text is big step forward for your marketing campaign. You're quite gifted dude ;)

As for religion and propaganda, I think it's dangerous to dismiss them as BS.
It's completely safe for sane minds and is approved by the greatest people in world history.

and that faith actively does enable them to deal with and get through situations that they otherwise wouldn't be able to.
Agree. Suicide bombing would become impossible without faith.
 
I don't think this is necessarily the right place to get into a debate about religion, propaganda, etc. but just very quickly and then I'll stop...

It's completely safe for sane minds and is approved by the greatest people in world history.

There has to be a danger in anyone thinking that only people who believe the same things as they do (whether that is science, religion, or whatever else) is sane.

It's far too easy to just dismiss anyone who believes in a deity that you don't as insane. Everyone thinks they are right, and will never agree with each other, that is just the way it is. Also 'the greatest people in world history' is pretty subjective. ;)

Agree. Suicide bombing would become impossible without faith.

People who are given to fanaticism and terrorism would find something other than religion to believe in and justify extreme actions if no religions existed: politics, sexuality, race, or any one of many other things.
 
I don't think this is necessarily the right place to get into a debate about religion, propaganda, etc. but just very quickly and then I'll stop...
It's an ok place, because all these terms are related to making money. By means of marketing, while implementing human emotions. Propaganda (when we mean PR) derived from a name of meeting of church cardinals, where decisions about spreading faith were carried out. Catholic church was one of the biggest land owners and still tax exempt. Something not so easy to achieve to other companies.

When I talk about sanity, I mean the medical norms. If adult believes the same things as child do, it is underdevelopment at least. Einstein, one of greatest scientists (may be the greatest actually), was in majority who are able to sort these things out in timely manner.

There are lot of people, who call French president a terrorist as well. That rage is just because of certain beliefs, further fueled by some leaders. And we, as sheep, must follow our leaders, right? Imagine French start burning Australian flags because of the broken 40 billion deal. There are civilized ways to behave. I'm sure, Afghan women would definitely agree with that last statement as well. Secular country seem like a norm in 21st century, doesn't it?

Repeat again - humanity must move forward breaking the chains holding it, pushing away fake ideals. It is easy to caught one's attention, while appealing to lowest instincts, but these should remain no more than examples of bad practices no matter if you propagate faith or sell web hosting.
 
When I talk about sanity, I mean the medical norms. If adult believes the same things as child do, it is underdevelopment at least. Einstein, one of greatest scientists (may be the greatest actually), was in majority who are able to sort these things out in timely manner.

Most surveys and studies put the amount of people globally who claim to have a religious faith at around 85%, so in your opinion only one and a half out of every ten people can be classed as medically sane?

While Einstein rejected the idea of a "personal God", he did believe that the universe "was created", and he also distanced himself from "fanatical athiests".

There a lot of very important scientists throughout history who have been religious, including Copernicus, Galileo, Faraday, Isaac Newton, Max Planck, and even Darwin described himself as agnostic.

I don't agree with their theology but I don't think any of them could be called less than sane.
 
Most surveys and studies put the amount of people globally who claim to have a religious faith at around 85%, so in your opinion only one and a half out of every ten people can be classed as medically sane?
More than 200,000 children sexually abused by French Catholic clergy, damning report finds

I don't agree with their theology but I don't think any of them could be called less than sane.
Well, people with extraordinary abilities often have serious drawbacks as well. For example - exceptionally good memory may mean that brain is not able to sort received information. Some people are indeed smarter than others, that's for sure, but when we talk about real geniuses, it's not easy to find out (even for scientists) for sure how they feel, what they think and who they believe.
 
I think the religion debate is so far off the original topic that we should probably quit it very soon, but...

Yes, clergy have abused children, I am absolutely sure that people of other religions and atheists around the world have too. No particular faith has a monopoly on this, there are truly awful and monstrous people of all faiths.

I also don't think that you can on one hand cite an example of a person being a great scientific mind and pointing out that he didn't believe in God, but then as soon as several other hugely important scientists are show to have had faith, dismiss them as not knowing what they believed.
 
I also don't think that you can on one hand cite an example of a person being a great scientific mind and pointing out that he didn't believe in God, but then as soon as several other hugely important scientists are show to have had faith, dismiss them as not knowing what they believed.
What do you know about the faith of people, who lived centuries ago? Earlier humans were bowing to sun and lightning, but that's only important as a historical fact, so that these days people would choose more wisely :) Yet many refuse to do so. Religion's primary objective was to gain control of crowds, create fear of things, that don't exist. Same with political regimes. Also it is very similar how corporations gain control of private data nowadays, and make those 85% **** their pants, when some social network goes offline for a few hours.
 
What do you know about the faith of people, who lived centuries ago?

Not very much, just the stated religious convictions of the particular people that I mentioned above...

There a lot of very important scientists throughout history who have been religious, including Copernicus, Galileo, Faraday, Isaac Newton, Max Planck, and even Darwin described himself as agnostic.

I don't think you should dismiss those people as stupid, insane, or any other similar term, that's all.

My final word on this (I promise this time) is this...

I don't believe in any deity or religion and I have a hard time understanding how anyone could, it makes no sense to me at all. But I will absolutely defend the right of people to subscribe to whatever faith they want, and to believe in whatever deity they choose to hold sacred, under the condition that they are not personally responsible for committing acts that damage or hurt others under the name of their god or belief system.
 
I think for Business to Consumer marketing emotions is of greater importance than for business to business marketing
 
I think for Business to Consumer marketing emotions is of greater importance than for business to business marketing

I think that is probably true if we are talking about large business or enterprise customers, simply because any purchasing decision has to go through multiple people and is rarely an emotional decision by one person.

With small businesses though, I think it can sometimes be as much of an emotional decision as it is with consumer purchases.
 
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