By: Tanja Džido, Creative & Account Manager, Envy Hrvatska
All kidding aside, are you among those who would like to have a campaign that people would click on, like it and share it to death? Would you like your figures to explode and exceed all of your set KPI’s, and that sales directors happily rub their hands after seeing the growth of sales figures?
Then read on and prepare a pen and paper (or prepare the screenshot buttons) because we will reveal a closely guarded recipe to viral campaigns.
Ready for it?
Emotion.
That’s right. Only that.
Emotions are a big part of our lives and they stand behind our most important decisions, but still, the very mention of emotions at meetings make all the present roll their eyes and look at you like you’re some kind of a mollusk, just out from an intensive course by Louise Hay, even though all of us who work in marketing know very well that emotions play a key role in consumer behavior, and therefore affect the performance of your campaign.
Despite the number of rolled eyes, emotions refuse to be swept under the carpet, and they jump at us from all sides (on Facebook they are now more present than ever), and regardless of their abstract nature, they have managed to assert themselves in the business world as a key factor of differentiation in the market, in spite of all the “non-emotional” sales and marketing directors who find it hard to acknowledge it.
Even they are beginning to realize that quality and price are no longer sufficient elements of differentiation, and that they can’t rely on the rational benefits of their brand, because there is no longer a rational buyer. Emotions determine sales, and thanks to a rapid growth of social networks, there’s no hiding from consumers’ emotions anymore. They jump all over you – through FB reactions, comments, inbox messages, blog posts… Thus they daily confirm that they hold the key role in creating the image of your brand and your sales results.
Why then run away from them? Why not embrace them, and instead of complicated numbers place emotions as the main KPI of your next campaign? Imagine a formula where you have the same number of loyal customers as the number of people whom you managed to get emotionally involved in your campaign, and then those loyal customers will buy your product xy times. Believe me that this is a lot better math than the ‘1+1 gratis’. Perhaps the latter shows better immediate results, but emotion is more worthwhile in the long-run.
In relation to other KPI’s, emotions are hard to quantify and analyze, but whether we want to admit it or not, they are the key determinants of the success of our campaigns. They are perceptual filters, they affect our daily habits and drive our decisions, both consciously and unconsciously.
If your campaign doesn’t provoke a strong emotion, if the consumer doesn’t feel some happiness, sadness, nostalgia, euphoria or anything like that after it, feel free to press delete on the whole folder and start from the scratch.
Make your campaign so that customers “feel” more. Tell them an emotional story and be yourself. Stop looking at customers solely as a source of income for your company and start addressing them as a friend or a closest neighbor. The emotion is felt, and will always be reciprocated, and directors (who can’t do without numbers) will be able to measure customers’ emotions by the number of likes, comments and shares, or something even more dear to them, the increase in sales of their products.
