Have you ever made an unplanned purchase, succumbing to a sudden impulse? Or did you choose your favorite brand, although the analogue on the next shelf was not inferior, or even surpassed it in quality?

Today, more than ever, it is important to win back the love of customers and build strong partnerships. But without emotions to touch the heart potential consumer fail. Unfortunately, the emotional side of marketing can often go unaddressed. Unlike physical indicators, such as clicks and leads, the impact of customer emotions on sales is very difficult to calculate. However, marketers need to understand what drives and how customers feel when they make a purchase or view a brand's ads.

“We want to believe that we are driven solely by logic. But it's not. According to research, 95% of people make decisions based on emotions Alicia Hatch, lead marketer at Deloitte Digital, says of customer behavior.

Study and improving the quality of engagement is the most important task of marketing. Increasing clicks to the site, filling out the form and placing an order should not be the only goal of a marketing strategy. Remember: behind every click or purchase there is a real person who right now is making an impression about your service or product. What will it be like? And where is the guarantee that after getting acquainted with the product, he will want to continue cooperation?

The modern consumer is very spoiled. It is not enough for him to have another “just” good product. He wants live communication with the company. And in order to feel sympathy for you, he needs constant emotional recharging. Think about what you associate with the client. What impression do your advertising messages make on him: surprise, encourage, inspire or emphasize status?

The feelings of the client can and should be influenced. We will give some tips on how to create bright emotions for your potential customers.

Empathize with your customers

Emotions are a human trait. Trust, envy, delight, tenderness, fear, nostalgia, self-importance, fatigue… Consciously or not, emotions influence our decisions and further actions. Therefore, being human can mean having, showing emotion and empathy for others. To hear and understand the feelings and desires of the client - distinguishing feature savvy marketer.

“Brands and retail businesses that have evolved over decades have constantly listened to their customers. Today, impressive success in the market is still being achieved by companies that listen and analyze their audience,” concludes CFO Adriana Shapira.

In practice, it is a complex creative process. “Listen” to the audience means to analyze the market comprehensively, taking into account the moods and emotional triggers of consumers. You can do it different ways, For example:

  • analyze the previous experience of interaction of customers with your company and their feedback;
  • empathize with customers, understand their emotions and deliver what they crave most.

Considering the emotions of your audience is extremely important when developing a content strategy. According to David Parker, head of Global Content Marketing & Digital Technology, a content strategy should be the result of what you hear from customers, analyze feedback, and align with your company's values.

If you create content based on a real assessment of the audience experience, then you will certainly get satisfied and loyal customers.

Tell emotional stories that captivate

The ability to tell fascinating stories is one of the oldest forms of human art, capable of building strong relationships between people. Stories bring us together around certain people, places, ideas, trends and products. Note to marketers: good story can make customers loyal to the brand.

“I think history is the only constant that can transcend time,” concludes Jay Altshuler, vice president of Media & Partnerships at Samsung Electronics America. "A great story always finds its way to people's hearts."

Jay also argues that the focus on stories is still new for marketers, but the art of storytelling will soon take over.

“Children, friends, partners, clients, investors - everyone wants to hear a sincere and true story based on their values. And experience it emotionally,” says Adrianna Shapira.

Isn't this the dream of any marketer: like-minded people and enthusiastic followers who create and tell the story of the brand together with you.

There are many examples of this. These are communities of fanatical gamers, endlessly expanding the space of already known gaming universes. And beauty bloggers, colorfully describing the experience of testing cosmetic new products. And, of course, the well-known effect of word of mouth: well, who did not succumb to the influence of "expert" popular opinion. What can we say about high-profile global brands and franchises, for involvement in which people are ready to pay fabulous sums.

Customer experience based on an emotional connection with your company plays a huge role in the effectiveness of marketing strategies. Your task is to provide users with all the conditions for maximum activity around your brand.

Conclusion

Today, marketing people need to focus on more than just what they can do. It is important to listen to customers and ask them what they can do for the brand and what they want for themselves. This will force marketers to think in a whole new way, putting the customer at the center of their marketing strategies from the very beginning, without focusing on quantitative indicators.

The Growing Role of Emotional Marketing

The traditional way of marketing and advertising, purely aimed at selling something, is getting worse and worse. Today you need to be closer and more and more in informal contact with your target audience. When you tap into emotions and use psychology properly, people feel more → happyand become more receptive to your brand.

If you want people to treat your company like a "person" and not like "another company," you need to create character. You should be not only a solution provider, but also a friend. Your promotional messages should aim to touch the heart of a potential customer.

→ The shortest course of successful communication

Law of the heart (of emotions)

Al Reyes, Jack Trout and Paul Temporal were among the first to describe the effectiveness of emotional marketing in their book “The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing ».

Although many say that we live in a rational world, this is far from the truth. We live in an emotional world. Emotions control our behavior, and they also move the whole world. People are not interested in product features. They are interested to know if the product suits their personality. The ball is ruled by the value of the product for the buyer. Therefore, emotional marketing is much more effective than rational marketing, which focuses on the characteristics of the product. To control the mind is good, but to control the heart is much better. Use marketing strategies that will force a potential buyer to make decisions on an emotional level, and eliminate rational considerations that can lead a person astray.

Samsung Electronics

How did Kun Hee Lee manage to take the company from outsiders to market leaders? When he saw the company's products gathering dust on store shelves, he made it a priority for the company to create stylish, high-end electronic products that ignite the emotions of customers with an elegant design aimed at satisfying human needs.

Consider cultural differences

Americans are very sentimental, so emotional marketing techniques used in their ads, touching images of people hugging and kissing, have a good effect. When some American firms began to play these same ads in Asia without adapting to the local culture, they simply aroused bewilderment among the more pragmatic Asian buyers: “What are they hugging? What do they mean by that? ".

A similar situation is observed with the emotional video advertising "Gazprom: Dreams come true!", because many people evoke only a bitter smile: "Dreams come true only for the leaders of Gazprom." As a result, such advertising worsens rather than improves the corporate image of the company.

The entertainment factor

→ Masterful Marketing

Why will people buy from you if they don't like it? If you can turn the buying process into a pleasure, you will take a big step forward. If you manage to infect the buyer with your enthusiasm and inspired vision of how wonderful the future can be, they will not even walk with pleasure, but rush to your store. Control successful business must be a source of pleasure for you, otherwise the business cannot be called successful. And since business brings you pleasure, share it with the buyer, and your business will become even more successful.

Put the calculator aside and ignore the data. Contrary to popular belief, startup marketing is about more than just numbers and growth hacking. It is important to create a bond between you and your customers. It is about managing the client's actions using human emotions through the art of storytelling.

People are inextricably linked to stories. They connect us to people, ideas, places, products and brands; they help us find explanations for why we spend our money and which brands we choose.

Digital media has leveled the playing field for marketing - resourceful startup marketers can tell compelling stories that impact just as much as their bigger competitors. Creative, emotion-driven marketing allows a company of any size to communicate a product to millions of consumers in real time. These digital and social channels of direct interaction with the consumer have replaced the traditional advertising that is preferred by large companies with big budgets.

Many companies know exactly what they're doing and are good at communicating in style ("we're making app X"), but only a few companies ask why. Soliciting an emotional response is a deliberate process that leads the buyer to immediate action. Too often, startups focus on tactics rather than the emotions they need to create.

It's easier to build marketing around something that happened (what) than to tell why they did it (why). Why allows a startup to tap into the intrinsic emotional benefits of its product/brand—excitement, happiness, or satisfaction.

In short, startup marketers need to engage a part of the brain that can be called the Story Button. Through the story, a startup can use emotional marketing, which creates more genuine moments of interaction with the client.

Emotions versus data

Emotional marketing is related to traditional data-driven marketing. Despite the buzz around growth hacking, today's most savvy marketers understand that consumers are more experience-driven than ever.

“Due to the abundance of data, there is a lot of focus on very powerful data-driven marketing,” says Craig Elbert, vice president of marketing for apparel e-commerce pioneer Bonobo. “But the numbers usually just tell you what's going on. To understand why and create actions, marketers need to make sure they spend enough time thinking about customer motivation and emotions.”

Elbert points to an important trend: the most recognizable brands have structured their businesses around meaningful, emotion-driven marketing materials that many marketers don't understand. Great marketers make consumers feel something - fear, satisfaction, guilt, trust, worth, belonging, envy, etc. These feelings, once evoked, guide actions.

Companies like Apple, Nike, and Virgin America have mastered the art of making customers feel connected to their brand. They, along with some startups, pull the emotional hooks that build trust. This builds brand loyalty, which leads to brand endorsement and leads to brand word of mouth, which 91% of millennials see as a guide to action.

The Science of Extorting Emotional Response

Psychologist Robert Plutchik identified eight primary emotions that drive behavior: joy, trust, fear, surprise, sadness, anticipation, anger, and disgust. These emotions are product-specific and, over time, establish consumer attitudes towards the brand that go beyond the traditional boundaries of interaction.

The question is, what emotions are the goal and how to get them? Elbert suggests the following correlation of emotions with consumer behavior:

  • Intrigue and mystery create curiosity that drives the desire for initial exploration, which is important in advertising and email.
  • Desire and desire - causes a desire to see what is useful for site shots, pages and photo collections.
  • Relevance and fear - provokes a sense of lack, which causes a purchase.
  • Surprise and laughter - driven by the desire for exchange.

“Emotions change the decisions we make, making us more impulsive. Given the nature impulsive person, brands can increase efficiency not only by looking at metrics and trends, but also by thinking about human emotions and playing with every step of the decision-making process.”

Emotions driving startup marketing

A startup's branding strategy and messaging must tailor the core psychological needs, desires, and behaviors of any audience.

If you don't remember anything else, remember this: Organizational marketing must include human emotion in all marketing practices, across all distribution channels. For startups, this is even more important as they strive to build loyalty among early adopters and form a community of like-minded people.

Plutchik's theory of psychoevolution of emotions explains that emotions play important role in cognition and behavior. His "wheel of emotions" illustrates the various relationships between emotions. In the marketing world, this equates to buying a product, not out of quality, but out of admiration, loyalty, or even envy.

Marketer and entrepreneur Nick Kolenda on how to use emotional appeals to influence consumer attitudes towards a product.

To bookmarks

The #tceh IT Education Center blog team translated an article by neuromarketer, psychology and marketing expert Nick Kolenda.

Emotions are extremely important in marketing, which is why I always wanted to write such a guide, but stubbornly put it off, because the amount of information on the topic can scare anyone. However, I finally made up my mind.

Chapter 1 Emotional Marketing

Emotional marketing is marketing that uses emotions to influence the consumer. Unexpected, right?

You can use emotions for different purposes:

  • Get the right perception.
  • Influence behavior.
  • Enhance sensations.

Chapter 2. What are emotions

Emotions are mental states that express our attitude towards an object. This is the "standard" answer to the question about the nature of emotions. There is another, more honest: we do not know anything about them.

For a whole century scientific research not a single objective and characteristic feature separate emotion.

Lisa Feldman Barrett, from What Triggers Emotions: The Secret Life of the Brain

The problem is that emotions do not have separate “labels”: anger, happiness, sadness. It's hard to admit it, but we did develop the terminology before we figured out the concept. Researchers are trying to influence this situation, but it seems to be too late.

To understand what emotions are, imagine a color spectrum.

In this case, we also use labels: red, green, blue. But color names are just general categories. In fact, each color has an almost infinite number of variations. There are so many shades of red that it would be pointless - and almost impossible - to try to give a name to each of them.

One tiny step in the spectrum is already a new color. So it is with emotions. Until recently, we thought of them as something specific, and this limited our understanding. In reality, emotions can be represented as an infinite spectrum.

Chapter 3

Human emotions have evolved so much because of their adaptive advantages in the process of evolution. They have always served two purposes:

1. Physical adaptation. Our ancestors survived because their bodies adapted to the environment.

Some phenomena require an immediate response - for example, the appearance of a predator. For others, the body must respond gradually and continuously, such as by regulating blood flow to maintain body temperature.

Internal reactions over time were reflected in the appearance of a person: in anger, the face turns red, and the pupils constrict. Visible changes are also adaptive in social interactions.

2. Social adaptation. We have evolved visible emotion indicators because they help you communicate and recognize other people's intentions:

  • The sight of an angry person forces one to be alert.
  • If you need to scare someone, we can demonstrate external signs anger.

social views living beings have a huge advantage: they have a mechanism whereby emotions can be quickly and efficiently transmitted from individual to individual. In humans, emotion contagion serves a range of functions, including warning, reassurance, and empathy.

Robert W. Levenson, from Blood, Sweat, and Fear. Autonomous architecture of emotions»

If our ancestors noticed a tribesman who was running in fright, they could react to his emotional action in order to prepare for an attack or flight.

Chapter 4. How Emotions Affect Our Decisions

Now the fun begins. I created a model to summarize the effects of emotions. After that, I promise to explain everything. So, the types of emotions are the previous basis, or antecedents. Emotions cause certain types of behavior, which, in turn, lead to various consequences.

This is a simplified model. For in-depth study you can refer to AIM (“Mood and Judgment: The Affect Infusion Model”) and Cognitive Evaluation Theory (“The Role of Emotion in Marketing”).

Antecedents

Three types of emotions influence our decisions (“The Nature and Role of Affects in Buyer Behavior”):

  • integral emotions directly related to the solution. You experience these emotions because of the current choices or the expected outcome (for example, the satisfaction of choosing option "B").
  • random emotions, the current mood. This principle is also called "feelings-as-information" because we use our current states (feelings) to form judgments (information).
  • Situational emotions. In one study, respondents were asked to rate their level of satisfaction with life. IN rainy weather people were much less happy. In response, they asked themselves, “How do I feel today?” Their overcast mood, stemming from the weather, affected the overall score.

Action-related emotions have characteristics inherent in the decision-making process. If you need to choose only one option out of many favorable ones, you may feel the expected regret. These negative feelings can influence the decision (for example, postpone the purchase).

Behavior

All three emotions in turn lead to intermediate effects:

  • Changing the area of ​​focus.
  • Displacement of informational, social, normative and temporal focuses.
  • Fluctuating levels of confidence.

Area of ​​Attention

Emotions influence our decisions because they adjust the scope of attention. Negative emotions (such as fear) mean a narrowed attention span. For example, if your child is not at home, it is difficult for you to concentrate.

Positive emotions (such as happiness) increase attention. When our ancestors were happy, they were in a safe place where an expanded attention span helped them find the resources they needed.

Emotions also affect the type of information we rely on - this is the information focus. We also tend to trust specific images more.

Even neutral emotions such as hunger stimulate acceptance or rejection.

Hunger is likely to activate general concepts and behaviors associated with acquisition. These acquisition concepts, once remembered, can influence subsequent decisions to acquire objects - even if they (say, paper clips) are clearly incapable of relieving hunger.

Time Focus

Emotions send us to the past, present or future. Temporal focus influences our decisions. For example, when we focus on the future, we have better self-control. In one experiment, people ate fewer M&M's when the researchers stimulated their feelings of hope ("").

Confidence Level

Emotions have different levels confidence. Consider anger and fear:

  • When we are scared, we are less sure of the outcome of a situation.
  • When we experience anger, we know its cause.

More importantly, we can interpret feelings of certainty and insecurity.

  • Cowardly gamblers experience great insecurity. They feel that their chances of winning are becoming more unpredictable and stop playing.
  • Anger-prone gamblers misinterpret their sense of confidence. They feel confident about the cause of their anger, and therefore confuse this feeling of confidence with the likelihood of winning.

Consequences

The previous factors increase influence in the following directions:

  1. Depth of processing.
  2. Decision making speed.
  3. Importance rating.
  4. Probability estimation.
  5. Choice of behavior.

Processing depth

Emotions influence our decisions because they affect the degree of mental processing of information. One factor is the level of confidence:

  • Emotions with a deep degree of certainty (anger) entail heuristic processing of information. We feel confident in our emotions and translate those feelings into confidence in our decision making. We do not need to think long, because we are sure in advance of the correctness of the decision.
  • Emotions with a low degree of certainty (fear) entail a systematic processing of information. We are no longer so sure of our emotions, and therefore, of the decision itself. There is a need to study everything carefully.

Another factor is valence ("Affective Influences on Evaluative Processing").

  • Positive emotions activate the process of heuristic processing information. Positive emotions for us are a signal of the safety of our environment, we feel more secure at the moment of making a decision.
  • Negative Emotions Activate Systematic Processing information. Negative emotions signal the insecurity, instability of our environment, we believe that we must carefully consider decisions.

Decision making speed

In the same way, emotions affect our decisions, reducing or increasing the speed of their decision. Our emotional system is anchored in the present ("Affect as a decision-making system in the present").

Under the influence of emotions, we make decisions faster and choose those options that provide immediate benefits. It makes sense. Our ancestors developed emotions to help in situations where a decision is needed right now (for example, to run or fight).

Valuation

Emotions influence our decisions because they affect the perception of value (“Beyond Valence: Toward a Model of Emotional Influence on Judgment and Choice”).

Relative value

We use two methods to calculate value:

  • Cardinal utility is an absolute value on a quantitative scale.
  • Usual utility is a relative value compared to other options.

Our emotions recognize the method of ordinary utility ("Affect as an ordinary system of judging utility"). Employees are more happy not when you raise salaries to unimaginable heights, but when you make their salary higher than that of colleagues.

Why do we focus on relativity? Again, this is how evolution has evolved. When our ancestors experienced emotions, they did not calculate how much they need to earn for a decent pension. They compared the available options:

  • Should I fight or run?
  • Should I hunt or stay put?
  • Should I do "A" or "B"?

These solutions do not require precise calculations. They only require to evaluate: "A" is better than "B"? Or is "B" better than "A"?

View Insensitivity

Emotions have a scale problem. In other words, when people rely on emotions, they are sensitive to the presence or absence of a stimulus (the so-called difference between zero and some value), but are immune to large variations in evaluation (“Music, pandas and robbers: on the affective psychology of value”).

Christopher See and Yuval Rottenstrih measured people's willingness to pay for Madonna's CD. To begin with, they asked irrelevant questions to guide participants' thinking in a rational or emotional way. Then they asked: "How much would you pay for a set of five or ten CDs?".

People calculate the willingness to pay for a product depending on the type of thinking:

  • Representatives of the rational group calculated how much they would pay for one CD (for example, $3). Then the value was multiplied by the number of CDs (for example, $15 for a set of five CDs, $30 for a set of ten CDs).
  • Representatives of the emotional group in the calculations were based on a personal relationship to Madonna. Regardless of the number of disks in the set, it remained the same, so the intensity of the desire to pay did not change (about $20).

People experience the same emotions at different levels - for example, if they read a story based on real events, or completely fictional (“Reading fictional stories and winning delayed prizes: the amazing emotional impact of distant events”).

We become so immersed in the emotional experiences of a fictional story that we are unable to distance ourselves from the information and assess whether what is described actually happened.

Likewise, waiting for a hit electric shock, people feel the same level of stress regardless of the chance of getting hit in 5%, 50% or 100%. The glowing image of the impact is all that matters.

Probability score

Emotion scale insensitivity and specific imagery influence how we evaluate probability. Imagine that you have to take a red bean out of a jar of white beans. What does your intuition tell you which group is more attractive?

Veronica Denis-Rudge and Seymour Epstein did the same experiment. Most people chose the first group, even if they knew that they were less likely to succeed in it.

Respondents reported that even if they knew that probability theory was not on their side, they felt more likely to stand a chance when they chose a jar with big amount red beans.

It doesn't matter that your chance of winning the lottery is 1 in 100 million. The mere presence of an image in your head of how you win is very convincing.

Choice of behavior

When people rate items sequentially, emotion influences the first option the most (“Mood and Comparative Judgment: Does Mood Affect Everything and, in the End, Nothing?”).

Why is this happening? We misattribute emotions. We perceive the first option as a source of mood. Subsequent options have less effect because we have already named our emotions.

If we feel good when we consider the first option, we are bound to be connected to that option.

Chapter 5

Before deciding which emotions to focus on, you need to figure out if you need to use them at all. Emotional appeals will be effective in the following situations:

  • Immediate solutions.
  • independent solutions.
  • undefined solutions.
  • hedonic options.
  • Purchase situation.
  • Communication with the older generation.

Immediate Solutions

Because our emotion system is anchored in the present, we rely on our emotions to make urgent decisions. Affective feelings depend more on judgments whose results and goals are closer to the present than on those whose effects are distant in time ("Affects as a decision-making system in the present").

However, urgent solutions depend on the context. In a study by Hanna Chang and Michelle Pham (“I” follow my heart and “we” follow my reasons”), students imagined that the final exam was waiting for them either in next month or next year.

In the first case, students would be more likely to rent an “emotional” apartment (for example, with an amazing view from the window) than a “rational” apartment (for example, one closer to the metro).

Basic strategy: if the client is limited in time when making a decision, adjust his emotions.

Tactic One: Reduce Decision Time for Hedonic Products

If your product is emotional in nature - like luxury shoes, for example - speed up the decision-making process:

  • Emphasize the limited quantity (for example, there are only two units left in stock).
  • Provide temporary discounts (for example, a sale this week only).
  • Minimize product availability (e.g. only sold in winter).

Tactic Two: Use an Emotional Appeal Before the Sale

Perhaps you are selling a product through automated system mailings in e-mail. In this case, place the emotional appeal towards the end of your trigger email chain—closer to the decision point.

Tactic Three: Place Hedonic Products at the Checkout

In retail stores, impulse purchases are usually hedonistic (chewing gum, chocolate, gossip magazines). This makes sense because people have a limited amount of time to make a decision.

You can use a similar approach in e-commerce. When you're selling something over a check, offer items that you enjoy near the end of your checkout time.

Tactic Four: Shorten the Waiting Time for Emotional Benefits

Because the emotion system is anchored in the present, it makes people impatient (“Bikinis provoke impatience in intertemporal choice”). Let's say you're selling a product that's meant to be fun (like stylish clothes), but the customer will only experience the benefits over time (delivery waiting period).

You can provide another benefit (access to a video with stylist tips for the purchased product). You will provide immediate benefits and be able to sell other products as well. Win-win strategy. Oh, and be sure to offer expedited shipping for emotional purchases.

Independent Solutions

Emotional appeals are more effective when customers make the choice alone. In a group of people, given the social consequences, we prefer the safer option. If the decision does not justify itself, we can always demonstrate the rationality of the choice, that is, it is easy to justify it (“I” follow the heart and “we” rely on reasons: the influence of self-regulation on dependence on feelings VS reasons in making decisions”).

In a b2b market where decisions involve a large number of people, don't rely on emotions alone. Always provide practical reasons for clients to use as a "parachute" when talking to colleagues.

Uncertain Decisions

Uncertainty can be of two types:

  • Good uncertainty: the contents of the gift.
  • Bad uncertainty: stock market crash.

Both options lead to greater reliance on emotions (“Uncertainty increases trust in affects in decisions”). When people are unsure, they use constructive thinking, which acts as a gateway to enter emotion ("Mood and Judgment").

When uncertain, give indecisive clients an emotional appeal. When clients are stubbornly indecisive, we usually resort to rational arguments. However, despite the inconsistency, their vague mood is already ripe for an emotional push.

Hedonic Options

This is perhaps obvious: emotional appeals are more effective for hedonic products. The root cause has to do with superstructure information (“The Impact of Advertising on Brand Evaluation: Empirical Summarizations of Consumer Reviews of Over 1,000 Commercials”).

Acquisition situations

Emotional appeals are more effective when you describe what your product does, not what it prevents.

When we are focused on acceptance, we perceive emotions more accurately (“Conditional dependency on heuristic affects as a function of regulatory focus”). We find emotional benefits more persuasive and rely more on peripheral information (such as visual aesthetics) rather than content ("Ideals and ideas and reliance on affect VS content in persuasion").

Using emotions in products for the older generation

Emotional appeals are more effective for older demographics. And the reason for this is quite interesting (“Age-Related Differences in Responses to Emotional Ads”). In any context, we view time as limited or expansive, which changes our behavior.

This is the theory of socio-emotional selectivity ("Taking time seriously: the theory of socio-emotional selectivity"):

  • When time is expansive (for example, in young people), we focus on the goals of knowledge. We spend more time planning to prepare for the future.
  • When time is limited (for example, in the elderly), we focus on emotional goals. We spend more time with loved ones, enjoying the present.

It is interesting, by the way, that the perception of time is very malleable. Perspective changes depending on the context. College freshmen have plenty of time to spare, so they prefer to make new friends. Undergraduates have a limited perspective. Therefore, they prefer to spend time with old friends (“Socio-emotional behavior at the end of college life”).

Chapter 6

4. Embarrassment. After making a social mistake, our ancestors needed to be restored public relations. They developed an embarrassment characterized by a submissive posture, a blush and signifying remorse. This is how they reclaimed their position in society ("Confusion: Its Distinctive Form and Function of Appeasement").

5. Shame. Similarly, shame makes people conform to accepted norms. Our ancestors needed the capacity for shame in order to accept their share of responsibility.

Chapter 7

First strategy. Feelings as a trigger for action

Zilenberg Marcel, Rob Nelissen, Seger Brügelmans and Peters Rick in the article "On the specificity of emotions in decision making" believe that feelings are correlated with actions. Every emotion serves an evolutionary purpose. So if you need to extract a specific behavior, just set the emotions that match that behavior.

Examples:

  • If you're selling stylish clothes, bring out the pride. Buyers will focus on someone else's opinion.
  • If you want to take customers away from a competitor, create fear. People will focus on escaping.
  • If you want people to donate, call the blame. They will be carried away by the atonement of past crimes.

Second strategy. Mood Matching

If you're not sure which emotions to target the customer, choose the feelings that match your product.

For example, people are more likely to choose an adventure vacation when they are excited. Pacified buyers often choose calm trips (""). Mood alignment is effective because we misrecognize emotions.

Valence: positive or negative

You can position emotions in two dimensions: valence and arousal (“Independence and bipolarity in the structure of momentary affects”).

Usually, you should focus on congruent (compatible, proportionate or matching) emotions. However, negative emotions are an exception. Through evolution, if people experience negative emotions, they also feel motivated to change their circumstances, and therefore turn to incongruent (non-matching) appeals.

Consumers in a negative mood prefer products that are inconsistent with both the level of arousal and the valence of their current emotional state.

From an article by Fabrizio Di Muro and Kyle Murray "Explanation on the influence of mood on consumer choice"

Excitation: low or high

The choice depends on your goal:

  • High emotions cause immediate action. People in tension are more likely to share online content (“Excitation increases social communication”).
  • Low emotions contribute to a favorable perception. When people are less aroused, they adopt lofty constructs that increase perceptual value (“Relaxation increases material appreciation”). People focus on big picture, so they place more emphasis on desirability (such as the attractiveness of a vacation) than feasibility (such as time or cost).

Temporal focus: past versus present or future

Emotions can focus on different time periods.

Past. Past-oriented emotions (such as nostalgia) can be effective. These emotions can cause an unfulfilled need.

The present. The next most useful emotions are present-oriented. They are especially valuable if your product has soothing properties.

This principle also applies to product evaluation:

  • When we focus on the future, we prefer exciting options.
  • When focused on the present, we prefer something more peaceful.

Future. If your product is not very exciting, you should avoid emotions associated with the future, such as hope. These emotions increase self-control (“Useful Hope: The Impact of Future Positive Emotions on Consumption”), which is not good for emotional buying.

In addition, despite the positive valence, these emotions are characterized by uncertainty. And we can mistakenly transfer our uncertainty to other aspects of the decision (for example, an indefinite desire for a product).

Chapter 8

We experience different types of emotions: integral, random, and task-related. How to call them? Select contexts in which people experience similar emotions. Instead of directly arousing the senses, look for places where people experience the targeted emotions you want ("Will this trip be really exciting? The role of random emotions in product evaluation").

Advertising placement

Consider context when choosing ad placements.

Spotify → cool playlist. Increases arousal, which increases propensity to act

Hulu → TV shows from the past. Touches on nostalgia that creates an impossible need that your product can satisfy

In both cases, people experience special emotions. If you present your proposal, people are more likely to misinterpret their emotions.

Instead of asking themselves how they feel about a product, people are more likely to ask, “Will this product make me feel the way it promises?” In the answer to this question, the phenomenon of the quality of sensations is more pronounced, and not the general valence.

Times of Day

People are characterized by high energy (high arousal) in the late morning, while at night they feel tired ( low level arousal). You can plan your segmentation strategies by using these time periods correctly:

  • Late in the morning, your site might recommend exciting products (such as sports equipment).
  • At night, soothing products (such as blankets).

Location

Location also influences emotions. If the store is located in a popular mall next to restaurants, it is logical to assume that many visitors eat before or after shopping.

  • If people have not eaten, they are hungry - that is, they are in a state of acquisition.
  • If people have already eaten, they are full - that is, they are in a state of saturation.

Always consider logistics. Even if, in a state of hunger, consumers rate products as more attractive, they may delay the purchase so as not to carry shopping bags to the restaurant.

Strategy: emotional schema

For the purpose of directly arousing emotions, network theory should be taken into account. Our brain is made up of an associative network. When we consider the relationship between two concepts, we form a connection between them. Then you just need to activate one concept to affect another. I will give some examples.

Color

facial expressions

Facial expressions are an equally powerful tool, because it is from them that we read other people's emotions ("Facial expression and emotion").

Write

After all, what does a studio need to prove that it is cool? Do something really cool. Come up with something that will be remembered by many and will play the role of a whole portfolio for many years.

The report was called “How to promote a brand with fan content”, but after the report I took a short interview, I felt that Eugene did not share everything interesting. So the article will be in two parts: - a transcript of the report - an interview with Evgeny Kudryavchenko.

How to promote a brand with fan content

Idea

excuse generator - Velcro for clients

Tells Evgeny Kudryavchenko:

After the dollar exchange rate rose strongly, we, as a rather expensive agency, began to sag in sales. And then we decided to attract attention and find new customers in an unusual way. There was an idea to make a site excuses.

Once upon a time, we ourselves resorted to the services of freelancers, and more often than an excellent result, we received wonderful excuses. We heard everything: about “accident near Kharkov, urgently send money”, about the fact that the project is ready, but then the capillary burst, and the doctor forbade working on the computer, about the fact that “nailed right hand, I type the code with my left hand, it’s very difficult.”

We decided to lead these excuses, to seize the leading position. It turned out that such a service already existed five or six years ago in America. But he only had 12,000 shares there during that time. And someone once tried to do something similar in Russia.

We understood that:

  • We won't get a second chance. If the project does not “shoot” immediately, then it is unlikely to take off later
  • We need to figure out how to beat him in form, because there have already been similar projects, and additional weighty arguments are needed to become the first.

main page of the leader of the smearing industry

And we began to urgently bother in terms of design. Let the designers do whatever they want. Initially, we understood that the design should be simple. The first option is without a character. Simple laconic design, one call to action button.

too concise

But it lacked some zest. The site did not catch on, and I did not want to return to it. Therefore, we decided to add a character. We found such a stupid person who evoked emotions.

really handsome?

When we found our character, everyone said: “Yes, he is kind of stupid!”. And then we immediately realized that he was what we needed. Because characters are meant to evoke emotion. They should amuse, they should upset, evoke emotions and leave no one indifferent.

We had to make excuses and a picture so funny that people would want to share it. To do this, we came up with an automatic text generator. And the ability to generate an excuse. Of course, the programmers made just the text, but again it turned out to be boring.

And we decided to send this character for automatic generation so that the pictures are different. Take the time and effort to find a character that will cling! If we replace this stupid face with some kind of cat, logo or other image, it would not be so memorable anymore.

Your main picture should hook the user even with the laziest scrolling. The ideal test is you put on your family at half past twelve in the evening, having already drunk a beer, and lazily flipping through your Facebook feed, and if you are somewhere, then this picture is very cool.

Try to immediately calculate what objections and wishes users may have. And knowing what they can tell you, you will have a ready answer: “Yes, we know, everything will be here literally in a day”, or a funny answer, or try to close this hole. Because the comments “Wow, cool!” and “Eh, why is there no mobile version?” - they are completely different in mood. And all such negative moods need to be removed and removed.

We filled the first 60 excuses ourselves. We remembered everything that was sent to us, and something began to come up with.

excuse must impress

We tried to use different humor. From complete nonsense (did not pick up the phone for seven days, a vow of silence passed), to real stories.

For example, we have a story about a copywriter girl. She wrote to us: “My parrot got sick, I take him to the vets. If you want to receive your text as soon as possible, pray for his health.” We used to believe such stories. Now we understand that everything happens in life, but still, when the SBU takes away servers from one person, then after three hours he already “resolved issues”, and the day after tomorrow his fiber optic was turned off in the whole city, and a day later If it was not aliens who took him for research, then it becomes clear what type of people he is.

So, we scored the necessary minimum for the start ourselves - about 60 excuses. We had three call to action buttons on the screen. The first "I want another excuse." At what we made a long break between excuses - it was about 8 seconds so that it was impossible to click quickly.

They complained to us, but we understood that if we were given the opportunity to click quickly or dump them in a list, then the wow-effect would be lost.

launch

how a single post on facebook worked

Everything was ready to launch. The release was scheduled for February 4, we had to contact loyal media, give them press releases and a press kit. But! I wanted to fix possible bugs. For example, we tested the website of the Ministry of Finance for two months, and after its launch, we found a bunch of bugs on Facebook in 30 minutes. Then I realized that Facebook is the best tester.

the same post

I started one single post on my Facebook and went to the hairdresser….When I got back to the office three hours later, we already had 36,000 visits.

Other than that one post, there was no more advertising, not a single cent invested in promotion, nothing. What happened?

post went viral

Clients liked our irony. They started writing to their clients and tagging them for everyone to see. They all got it. In fact, there were about 10,000 sherov. He wrote about us “Zuckerberg will call” (now VC.ru). Then Cossa, then we got into the selection of Mann, Ivanov and Ferber “60 most useful Internet services”. It was already unstoppable. On the first day we were visited by about 100,000 people.

Do you want to be written about? Come up with something cool

I will say that excuses are actually sent to us so far. Here is a screenshot:

notice how the number of excuses has grown

There is still traffic. Now the average site traffic is 1000 people, the peak was 100,000, and there were some peaks in the moments after the publication of the advertisement of the next resource.

In principle, we do not deal with the site, we only occasionally publish excuses. People complain that we do not edit them and a lot grammatical errors. But we chose to publish it as it is. This is how they are sent to us, in the same spelling we publish. Someone thinks that we are lazy, but our point of view is that this is how written excuses are sent to customers.

results

modestly ... what's there, no, not modestly

But since “Zuckerberg” and Cossa wrote about our site, they found out about us on Russian market. We have received about 10 direct clients. The questions were about subcontracts - how much does a design cost, and how do you do layout. (By the way, we made the layout original).

By by and large the entire CIS digital market learned about us.

So, good idea+ decent implementation = success. It is very important that you are remembered, that the content goes by word of mouth, that there is huge traffic. Do everything for this. Press the layout designers, look for your character, your concept. Whatever the brilliant idea, if it is poorly implemented, then they will not want to share it.

What didn't fit in the frame. Interview

Tell me, do you use a sense of humor in other projects, or is it a one-time action? We use it where appropriate.

But definitely not for the website of the Ministry of Finance? For the website of the Ministry of Finance, there were just not enough jokes. But I can give an example of an online clothing store for girls. A person buys and puts the goods in the basket - usually it is always very boring. Thank you for your purchase! We will call you back! It's sad.

And we decided to add characters - two heroes of warehouse employees who start to fight over who will fulfill this order. They danced a striptease there, made compliments, fought - butted heads and shouted: “This order will be mine!”. These were 10-15 second videos that were shown to the site visitor after placing an order.

The effect exceeded all expectations. The girls really liked it - it's not enough to say. Letters “we want to meet the guys” began to come to the store, say hello to the guys. There was only one minus that used to order a lot of goods. But then they started ordering one product at a time to watch different videos with the guys.

Wonderful! Only one thing is not clear - how you explained this idea to the customer. How did you get him to agree? Was the customer pretty creative? We came to the showroom, the girl buys some beautiful thing and immediately starts taking pictures with her, begins to enjoy her. She gave money, received a thing, and joy came to her. And on the Internet? She bought ... but there is no joy. There are hours of waiting, and we decided to thank the girl for her actions right there.

As a result, the customer began to praise the online store even before receiving the goods. She hasn't received anything yet, but she's already writing on Facebook: "This is the best online store I've ever seen."

In fact, people are so tired of such plastic forms, plastic communication. For example, when we were making an online store for books, we wrote “catalog - I’ll find it myself” or “let the computer find it”.

When there is a need to move from “you” to “you”, you should always do it.

Or take any form on the site. For example, a form of eight fields: fill in the passport, identification code, enter your data, on top the heading “Fill out the form”. It's so boring!

But you can write: “Attention! If you do not want your customs uncle to lose your package, please fill in this data without errors. And how much such a live appeal instead of a dry “fill out the form” increases the conversion - and it costs nothing to the client.

How to promote a serious project? What to do then? In serious projects, it is necessary, no matter how trite it sounds, to work for the target audience. But even if we sell some complex systems that are integrated at factories with 50,000 employees, in the end, the decision to integrate this system is made by a specific person - the owner, shareholder, IT director. And this particular person, he also wants to eat, enjoy life. You can communicate with him “like you”, or in his language, and work not for everyone, but for this particular decision-maker. When we create a “serious” site, we see one person who should come in and say: “Damn! I finally found them."

Tell me, does your studio have a blog? It's just that this conference is dedicated to content marketing. Or are you just as cool as a content generator yourself and therefore don't need a blog? We only have an English-language blog so far. We need it to move to the west, unfortunately for Europe and America we are not named yet. But in Russia and Ukraine we are very well known (we have so many awards, we flicker at all conferences, seminars).

These cases could be told to people in the blog (sotritelling), arranged as articles, long reads, and you would ... become famous number two. For Ukraine, probably, there are simply not enough other resources, and in general, I think that a blog is the right idea. And if any company has something to tell, then a blog will be very useful to them.

I hope you enjoyed the story and the interview and inspired it.