How Emotions Impact Marketing Success

Emotional intelligence is too often ignored in marketing, but its impact on success can be profound. It’s more than understanding the emotional drivers of your audience, it’s about creating a genuine, empathetic connection that creates trust and brand loyalty. 

This isn’t merely an idea, but an actionable strategy that brands can implement to inspire and persuade customers effectively.

How to Incorporate the Idea of Emotional Intelligence Into Your Marketing

1. Understand Emotional Marketing

Brands can harness the power of pathos to elicit desired emotions from their audiences. By understanding and tapping into these emotions, you can forge a stronger ‘bond’ with your audience and drive deeper engagement. 

For example, Coca-Cola ran a “Choose Happiness” campaign that attempted to correlate Coke to happiness, and although there is no logical connection between the two, it was an effective campaign. 

Emotions such as happiness, trust, surprise, and even fear can be powerful tools in persuading your audience. Eliciting these feelings at the right moments can guide your audience further down the conversion funnel more effectively.

2. Eliciting Customer Emotions

Get listed in professional directories. This includes lists of businesses in your area, in your industry, or professionals with certain licenses. Even Facebook groups can help.

3. Crafting Emotional Narratives

People are natural storytellers, and we respond positively to stories that resonate with us on an emotional level. Stories allow us to empathize with characters, visualize issues, and imagine ourselves in the narrative. For marketers, this is a very potent tool if used properly. 

A compelling narrative can humanize your brand and create an emotional bond with your audience. It allows you to demonstrate your brand values and better portray a brand promise or mission statement. From overcoming obstacles to achieving a far-fetched goal, stories imbued with emotions can significantly enhance your marketing impact.

4. Personalization Through Rigorous Customer Discovery

Emotional intelligence can also power personalization and understanding in marketing. Understanding your audience, what makes them tick, and what makes them run, is one of the most essential steps in this process. Gauging the emotional reactions of your customers and having a proper understanding of who they are will allow you the personalize your content to each segment. 

One of the most incredible examples of the lengths that companies will go to understand customers’ emotions is found in the car company Bently. In 2015, Bently released an emotion recognition app that analyzed what car buyers found inspirational. The outcome of this technology was a custom Bently, tailored perfectly to what the buyer found inspirational. 

Emotional personalization’s go further than just typing their name into an email. It’s about using insights gained from behavioral data and your emotional intelligence to deliver messages that truly resonate on a personal level.

Integration of Emotional Intelligence in Marketing

The integration of emotions into marketing strategies offers the potential to connect on a deeper level with potential customers. By understanding, eliciting, and responding to customer emotions, a brand can create more impactful and resonant marketing campaigns. Emotional intelligence, thus, becomes a critical tool in the marketer’s arsenal, facilitating deeper connections, and ultimately, driving success.

About the Author

Derrick Kuhn

Derrick Kuhn

Derrick Kuhn is our Founder and Managing Director. He specializes in all things digital marketing and strategy. He has pursued business as a platform to pursue ideas and opportunities to grow, explore, contribute, and chart his own course for over 20 years, and is passionate about learning, neuroscience, and fitness.

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