Connections Healthcare Strategies

Appealing to Emotions in Marketing

appealing to emotionsA marketing campaign begins with an idea, a brainstorm session, and numerous cups of coffee. With the help of a digital, creative, and strategy team this idea can become the next viral video, get 10,000 likes on Instagram, or be trending on Twitter. Whatever the goal of your campaign is, there is one factor that needs to be incorporated for success. And that is emotion. The efforts you invest into this campaign are only as good as the emotions you appeal to.

Advertisements are everywhere, and making them stand out has become harder than ever. How does someone remember that one Facebook ad after seeing upwards of 30 a day? How do you stand out in a world bombarded by advertisements? By narrowing down your target market to one specific emotion and triggering it.

Provide Value

We all know the use of a cell phone. It makes calls, sends texts, has thousands of apps. And when you see a cell phone commercial, do you simply see someone sending a text? NO. What you see is the smile on their face when they receive that text, or the tears of a powerful phone call. The marketers tapped into the emotional use of a cell phone making the days of not owning one obsolete.

How can I do this to my potential customers:

Identify what you are providing to better their life. This is how you provide value, not by what great facility or newest technology you have, but what you can do for them that they cannot get anywhere else. That is what needs to be captured and target to the right market.

As a physician it might be the image of family and how seeing your provider keeps you alive and healthy, therefore, being able to spend more time with your loved ones. As a wellness facility, tap into your target market’s identity, making it so you are appealing to their ideals rather than what you are offering them. It is important to remember what you are providing should be satisfying an essential need.

Minimize Choices

When offered too many choices, your potential client can become overwhelmed with the amount of products or services to choose from. How can they choose just one when there are fifty? Instead of offering this wide variety of products and services, offer a solution.

To the Potential Customer:

By narrowing down your target market, you can identify what specific service or product they might need. Your goal will be to market that to them, because it will have an individualized feel to that person. If a person feels you know how to make their life easier, less stressful, or just better, then they are going to buy from you. Once you’ve got them locked in this is how you start to build the relationship and strengthen the emotional connection. This step builds trust. People are more likely to buy or become a patient if they feel like they can trust you.

Increase Happiness

People have an innate desire to be happy and tend to shy away from things that can reverse that. This is why when marketing yourself, product, or service you want to appeal to the unhappiness, making it seem someone cannot be happy without what you can provide. This isn’t a new concept but it is an effective one, and sometimes marketers need to be reminded of this.

Accomplishing this:

The goal of this is not to be manipulating, but motivating to get your potential customer to do something. This goes back to inciting fear. No one wants to get sick, it’s why we get flu shots or a yearly physical. But sometimes there is no avoiding it. That is why you advertise all the side effects of a disease or being obese to scare and make the customer fearful, meaning they call to schedule with you.

In an analysis of the IPA dataBANK, which contains 1,400 case studies of successful advertising campaigns, campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well as those with only rational content. Making the importance of appealing to emotions in marketing even more important than ever. This generation of people are more money conscious, health conscious than ever and only want what is going to benefit them. Tap into that and all your marketing campaign goals are achieved.

 

If you are struggling to define your target market, or too stressed out to even start, then the team at Connections Healthcare Strategies is here for you. Our educated and experienced marketing professionals can help you set and accomplish all your marketing goals. Contact us today for a complimentary strategy session.