By Lauren Fenthum<---- To view/save infographic
CLICK HEREDespite millions of years of evolution and development, humans still rely heavily on emotions when it comes to making decisions. As marketers, you need to be aware of connecting emotionally with customers and find out what really makes them attached to your brand or product. Antonio Damasio, a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Southern California, has done extensive research when it comes to the decision making and evaluation process of brands and products and has come to the conclusion that humans make their decisions largely based on how they feel. So how can marketers capitalize on this? You need to appeal to the human, not the buyer.
Humans have four core emotions; happy, sad, afraid and angry. These emotions enable us to survive and they are hardwired into our brains- they should not be forgotten when it comes to creating and publishing content. This can be seen when it comes to that of positive and negative content within media. Sharing news that is depressing is not going to make you appealing to the mass markets, haring positive stories are much more likely to grab your audience’s attention and create shares and likes.
Pay Attention to Headlines. Although positive stories are more likely to get reactions, it’s the negative headline that evokes readers to click on your article. Negative news gets clicked and read but the happy news gets shared. To increase engagement on your posts, try using negative superlatives in your titles like “why so many businesses fail” instead of “how to start a successful company.”
Everyone Loves to Laugh. This is not only one way of encouraging shares and reactions on your posts but people are always looking for a way to show off their own sense of humour online. Making people laugh can increase your customer engagement and make people feel more comfortable when it comes to interacting with your brand.
Curiosity Killed the Cat (or so they say). Look at what will make your consumer’s say, “wow!” Creating a sense of mystery evokes a sense of wonder and makes people want to click on your content to find out more. This is not to say that you should resort to scam headlines or using clickbait just to grab your consumer’s attention, just be creative without revealing the whole article in the title.
It is vital for marketers to understand how we rely on emotions to make decisions and how they can appeal to the feelings of a customer when trying to generate and increase your leads or sales. It is important that marketers use techniques that market to the hearts and not to the heads. As humans, we love the feeling of inspiration and having the feeling that we connect or belong to a part of a group. Marketers can use this to build a strategy that plays on the aspect of inspiration and aspiration and apply this into their selling points. By understanding how your customer feels and evoking certain emotions during the buying process you are more likely to form a good working relationship with the customer as well as encourage sales generation.
