Emotional Marketing: 12 Emotions That Provoke A Response

When you're trying to make an impression on existing and potential customers, emotional marketing is a powerful way to provoke a response.

By harnessing the power of emotions in your marketing materials, you can inspire your audience into making a purchase, hiring your services, joining a club or supporting your cause. No matter what the purpose of your poster, leaflet or brochure, appealing to one of the key human emotions can help you to achieve your goal.

Emotional marketing: Appealing to different emotions in your marketing materials can help your audience take the course of action you are hoping for. Image courtesy of Salvatore Vuono at FreeDigitalPhotos.net.

The role of emotions in marketing

Whether you're launching a new product or appealing for charity donations, creating an emotional response in your potential buyers or backers is vital. Simply saying “buy now!” or “please donate” simply won't cut it – and will often annoy would-be customers.

Instead, taking customers on an emotional journey is an important part of the marketing funnel. Appealing to the emotions is a way of making your company memorable, and usually edges you above your competition.

Emotional marketing is far more likely to eventually lead to more sales or donations, and longer lasting relationships with customers. When considering emotion in marketing, design is key. There are several ways that you can create an emotional relationship through your marketing materials:

• The words you use in your copy are extremely important to the way your audience reacts to your work. Does your text create an emotional response?
• Images are also important. Not only do they attract attention, they can also cause your audience to response in a number of ways. Choose your images carefully to create the desired emotional response.
• Colour is another important factor. Different colours have different emotional meanings, and these can be used to great effect in your marketing materials to create the response you want.

Let's take a look at 12 of the most powerful emotions you can target in order to invite the desired response from your audience.

#1 – Empathy

One of the greatest ways to get people on side with your message is to make them empathise with you. When raising money for charity, empathy is a superb emotion to target, because it provokes people into wanting to help people who are less fortunate than themselves. For this reason, marketing materials that stir up empathy in the audience are powerful.

#2 – Nostalgia

People love to look back on happy times, particularly their own memories. If you want to create a printed piece that inspires people to share and take action, a retro or nostalgic design is a great way to go. The recent resurgence of the “Keep Calm and Carry On” themed posters of the Second World War are a great example of nostalgia in design.

#3 – Anger

When you're angry, how do you react? It's highly likely that you feel the need to channel your anger by taking some form of action. While provoking anger in your audience on a regular basis probably isn't advisable, when deployed rarely, it can be a powerful weapon to encourage action. Like empathy, targeting the emotion of anger can be a particularly profitable idea for charities, as it can make people want to reverse an injustice and right a wrong.

#4 – Fear

If you're looking to sell a product or service, creating fear in your audience is a brilliant way to drive them to buy. Create “FOMO”, or fear of missing out, by using words and phrases that suggest scarcity or urgency, such as; “limited stock”, “hurry, only available while stocks last!”, or “only 10 places available”.

#5 – Humour

Appealing to a person's sense of humour is a perfect way to get them to share. By inspiring a good feeling of laughter and fun, your audience becomes more receptive and much more likely to share your message. When it comes to emotional marketing, humour is one of the key reasons why many marketing campaigns go viral – not just online, but in printed marketing, too.

#6 – Shock & Awe

It can be difficult, but if you can manage to produce something that shocks your audience and stirs up a feeling of awe, it is highly likely to remain memorable for a long time. Something hard hitting means that the audience will remember your brand, and this can lead to new customers and increased brand loyalty over time.

#7 – Excitement

We all love to feel excited. From a very early age, excitement is one of the most powerful emotions we experience. For this reason, appealing to this emotion from a marketing point of view is a good way to encourage your audience to react and respond. When excited, they will likely be much more inclined to learn more, or perhaps buy your product.

#8 – Aspiration

Often used in the health and fitness industry, aspirational designs are another good way to inspire people to purchase products or services. These types of marketing material create a feeling in people that they want to make a change. For example, a gym or a weight loss product might show before and after images of a person's weight loss journey, creating aspiration in people who see the poster and also want to make a similar change.

#9 – Intrigue & Mystery

Appealing to a person's sense of intrigue is a way of encouraging them to take action. The mystery that surrounds your design can be a powerful tool in provoking intrigue, which in turn encourages people to want to learn more. Minimalist designs which don't reveal too much information immediately are great for creating this sense of mystery.

#10 – Guilt 

Nobody likes to feel guilty, especially consumers and customers. If you can trigger a sense of guilt in your audience, you could be well on the way to gaining their support and forcing them to act. Charities and non-profit organisations often use guilt by imploring their audience to act, using words such as “help them” or “end their suffering”. These kind of terms encourage people to help those who are less fortunate than themselves because of the guilt that it invokes.

#11 – Trust 

One thing you want your customers to do, is to trust your brand and your company. If you can't be trusted, they won't use you again – and you'll soon start to lose custom, revenue, and support. Use reassuring phrases in your marketing copy to build trust with your audience. Legal and financial companies do this well by using terms such as “no hidden costs”, “no-win, no-fee”, and “no obligation”.

#12 – Affection

Similarly to humour, the emotion of affection is another feel-good one to tap into. Affection often inspires sharing, leading to increased awareness of your brand. If you're looking to create this emotion in your audience, feel-good images are a great option – cute cats and puppy dogs in particular are popular!

Affection: Images of cute cats and other animals are a great way to create a feeling of affection in your audience. Image courtesy of Viktor Hanacek at picjumbo.com.

Are You Using Emotion In Your Marketing?

When it comes to designing your printed marketing materials, of course it's important to include relevant information about your product, services or your company in general. But it's also vital that you make an emotional connection with your audience.

Depending on the desired goal of your material, appealing to the human emotions is the perfect way to create a long and lasting relationship.

If you're not already, start practising emotional marketing. What other emotions can you appeal to in your marketing materials?