Ten ways to make your marketing campaign emotional

Marketing teams are starting to focus on our emotional reactions to content. Photograph: I Love Images/Corbis

It’s been an emotional time for marketers. No, I’m not talking about the John Lewis Christmas ad, but the current emphasis on human emotion that’s running through the agency industry. It seems that the focus of many conversations has switched from data-driven return on investment (ROI) to a more human bias.

Delegates witnessed this trend at the recent B2B Marketing Conference on emotional engagement at the Royal Institute, where the theme was the importance of understanding people as much as brands and businesses.

Here are ten important issues raised on the day.

1. According to Chris Wilson, managing director of Earnest, buyers are people, and people are not rational beings. We will often make a subconscious decision and then construct a rational argument to fit, completely unaware that we are doing it. In fact, 90% of people will choose a brand they have already heard of. Building brand awareness in a B2B market, where buying cycles are often very long, is crucial.
   
2. Another theme form the day: marketing isn’t rocket science, but it is neuroscience. We feel first and think second. Any decision is made up of thousands of micro-decisions and a huge number of these will be sub-conscious. Therefore, longer-term campaigns that use concise and emotive messaging that appeals to our subconscious mind will be most effective. Adding an emotional context to your marketing will not just make your campaigns more touchy-feely, but make them more engaging and effective.
   
3. Darren Bolton, executive creative director of OgilvyOne dnx, talked about the four key emotions: happiness, sadness, fear and anger. Depending on your objective, these can be leveraged to drive engagement. Decide what you want your audience to feel and develop a campaign back from that feeling. By thinking more like a film-maker than a marketer, you can create content your audience will engage with and share.
   
4. Some speakers touched on a familiar theme: find out what really matters to your audience. What keeps them up at night? What do they desire? The world for them does not revolve around your product or service, but if you can help them with what is important to them, your brand becomes positive valuable to them.
   
5. Another theme: our perception of brands is created across all touch points – everything from communications and PR to the sales contact. In the BRB sector the sales force is as much a part of your brand as any other platform. Building an emotional connection internally and with sales is often the most challenging element of the mix, but it can be the most effective.
   
6. One speaker, Mark Addis, strategy director at NewsCred, said that content marketing is nothing new. From social media to infographics, white papers to video, there is a huge amount of content out there. By 2015, the average person will be exposed to 15.5 hours of content every day, so content will have to to cut through the noise. What better way than to appeal to our all-ruling primitive brain than through emotions.
   
7. You can’t make people care about your content, but you can make content care about people, said Katie Canton, head of social media at Birddog. She said to think about why people share content on social platforms and follow the basic rules: be selfish (create content you care about); be focused (create tailored content for each element of your audience); be accommodating (content in the formats they want); be shockingly creative (not rude, but really standout); tell a story (it’s what we are hardwired to retain and engage with); and make it easy to share (share buttons, calls to action).
   
8. Creating strong content in any volume can be a daunting thought, mentioned some speakers. Marketing departments often don’t have the resource or budget to create or commission content. So what’s the answer? In a nutshell, curating as well as creating. By using licensed content from publishers and user-generated content, mixed with original content, you can ensure you have a relevant mix that will help you nurture your audience.
   
9. Think like a journalist, said Stuart Maister, managing director of BroadView. When creating content, there needs to be a story – one with a killer “hook” to get people interested. Ideally, it should be intriguing enough to take people to the next level of information (the elevator pitch) and then offer the information as a story that adds further detail.
   
10. Tell a story; it’s what we like, was another theme from the event. We are hardwired from the days of when we lived in caves to take in stories and engage with them. Brand storytelling is a well-established concept. Authentic stories help make a brand relatable and engaging.

Susan Bolam is client services director at Jellybean

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