Tapping into your target audience's emotions has become part of the marketing mix. Why not? After all, the only way you can emotionally connect with your prospects is when you know their pain points. Emotional branding has created a ripple effect. You create a need, build trust, and establish loyalty. These are all parts of the marketing chain. As the use of Facebook Ads is becoming the norm in social selling, it is important to tell a story that your audience can relate to. This is where emotional marketing comes in.

The Science Behind Emotional Marketing

Without a doubt, most people's buying decisions are motivated by emotions, consciously or unconsciously. While they may search for solid facts and figures to assess brands, it is their emotions that decide whether or not they are going to commit to buying the product. However, not all emotions can produce desired results.

Emotions and Their Effects on Customers

Happiness

Happiness is a positive emotion. When triggered, it stimulates people to take positive action such as sharing. If you are going to incorporate happiness into your marketing strategy, you will be able to create a much deeper connection with your audience. Ads and campaigns often focus on joy and happiness to improve customer relationships. Videos or photos of cute babies or animals have a great tendency to go viral because they elicit a positive response.

Sadness

Fundraising campaigns use images, and they are not just ordinary images. They are images that tell a story. What is it about great fundraising campaigns that make them emotionally poignant? These ads have one thing in common: they inspire compassion and trust. Sadness encourages your audience to donate to a fundraising program, support a campaign, or even initiate change.

Fear

Although fear is a negative emotion, it can still increase brand attachment. Fear of missing out, also referred to as “FOMO,” gives customers an opportunity to remember products and services. There are ads that encourage viewers to take immediate action. This alone can get the audience to connect with your brand. However, this emotion can also be dangerous, especially when its use is carried to extremes.

Anger

Like fear, anger is also a negative emotion. A marketing campaign that is created to trigger anger is a prelude to promoting viral content. Anger pushes the audience to take action. When using anger marketing, make sure the service or product offers an actionable answer.

Emotional Marketing and Facebook Ads: Getting the Perfect Blend

1. Feed Your Audience's Curiosity

The first thing that comes to mind when talking about building a curiosity gap is an interesting headline. In all likelihood, you have come across viral content while scrolling through the Internet. These articles certainly win the audience's attention, simply by making them curious. So if your goal is to attract people's attention, creating a headline that they cannot resist is going to be your best bet.

Of course, you need to keep your audience in mind. A catchy headline will be rendered useless if you fail to target a specific audience. The best way to capture them is by asking a fascinating question. Telling an engaging story will also help you build rapport.

2. Focus on Positive Posts

People are more likely to share positive posts than negative ones. This is why, if you create Facebook Ads, the focus must be on promoting positive feelings. These ads will attract more clicks and likes. So what does a positive ad look like? There are three elements that must be included in your Facebook Ads: design, image, and content.

Cheerful feelings are always associated with bright and happy colors. Stick to them.

Aside from colors, you will also need to pick images that convey happiness. A smiling face, a group of happy people, or friends celebrating success. But while pictures speak volumes, content is still king. Include inspiring words in your ad to give it more value. It could mean a lot to your audience.

3. Fuel Intense Emotions

Aside from happy content, another way to entice your audience is by making them fearful or angry. Posts that encourage an exchange of ideas and opinions often trigger higher engagement. A word of caution, though: Make sure you use this technique sparingly. More often than not, these emotions are triggered when a highly sensitive topic is discussed. Politics, for instance, has always been a hot topic of discussion. If the subject stirs a controversy, expect posts to drive engagement like crazy.

Applying Emotional Marketing to Facebook Ads Comes with a Caveat

The technique sounds promising, but it is not a one-size-fits-all solution. Without understanding the psychology of your audience, or not knowing what their tastes and preferences are, emotional marketing will not yield the results you are looking for.

As you employ emotional marketing techniques, don't forget to take your branding into consideration. How do you want to engage with your prospects and existing customers? Do you want to make them happy, build a curiosity gap, or strike chords of fear or anger?

Whatever your goals are, the message you want to convey should ultimately make customers feel good about the decisions they make.

Emotional marketing creates a deeper connection with your audience. If you want to emerge victorious, start focusing on the essentials. At the end of the day, it’s still your marketing skills that will dictate how your audience responds to your ads.

ABOUT Daniel Ross

Daniel Ross is part of the marketing team at Roubler - an Australian-based scheduling and payroll software platform that provides end-to-end cloud-based solutions and gives employers flexible management of the entire employee lifecycle.