What are you afraid of? Losing your job? Becoming insignificant? Facing something you’ve never done before? Falling out of (or in) love? Threats to your family’s safety? Becoming old and alone?
Read that paragraph again. Most of us have a strong emotional reaction to those threats. That reaction causes physical changes. Our pupils dilate a fraction of a millimeter. Our heart rate quickens. Blood flow increases.
You know what that means? We’re engaged. We’re paying attention.
As marketers, that’s exactly what we want from our targets.
We can’t yell “Fire!” in a crowded theater just to get people moving. There are boundaries we shouldn’t cross just to sell more products. But we do need to find a way to engage our targets and get their attention.
Find the fear. Appeal to the emotion. Understand their deepest desires. And look for a way to connect that need with the real benefits your product or service provides.
Reason & Fear: The Balancing Act
The flip side of emotion is reason. In marketing, we can’t live without it. Logical proof points help our customers rationalize their choices. But if we don’t appeal to a deeper emotional need, those proof points are like a physics lecture – interesting to some, but most of us just don’t care. Prospects need reasons to back up their decisions, but if we fail to engage them on an emotional level, we’ll never get a second look.
The next time you’re looking for a way to connect your product or service with your targets, think about fear. It’s a powerful motivator.
What deep-seated fears can your product help ease? Once you understand the target’s fears, you can soften the approach. People will still get it. Then use reason to back up your emotional message. It’s a one-two punch that always connects. Try it. What are you afraid of?
Have you seen emotional appeals that work particularly well? Are there some that go over the top? How far can we go when making an emotional appeal?
One Comment
Great post, reminiscent of the emerging concepts of neuromarketing and appealing to our most root level of processing in the animal part of our brain – that “fight or flight” response.
In thinking a lot about this, it does seem clear that the marketer ideally needs to do 3 things; 1) assure the audience that they “are not in any danger” with your product; 2) that if they “kill” your product they will be able to feed themselves, their families, and boost their status in their community; and 3) that if they don’t go after your product, then all those things from #2 may be in jeopardy.
It’s entirely how reptiles make decisions, mostly how mammals make decisions, and apparently, its how we humans make decisions, even though we don’t yet understand it entirely.