The Power of Emotional Targeting in Advertising

Scientists believe that people tend to make emotionally-driven decisions much quicker than logical ones. It only takes a fraction of a second to process sensory information through our emotional centers to get a response. This system is key to many subconscious processes –  for instance, our basic survival instincts. 

The same applies to how we see ads. People only spend a millisecond to know if they like what they see. Functions like that save our brain energy, since processing everything logically often takes more time and effort than is needed. For advertisers, that means that ads have only a split-second to get someone’s attention – and stay in their memories. How can we do that? Emotional targeting has the answers, utilizing a variety of tools and approaches. Let’s find out how.

What Is Emotional Targeting?

Emotional targeting is an advertising method that focuses on understanding how the audience behaves, and identifies correlations between emotional states and decisions. Through emotional targeting, advertisers can create and deliver ads that stimulate engagement and increase brand awareness. 

Emotional targeting allows advertisers to interact with audience groups in order to spark certain feelings by using special ‘triggers’ that activate specific parts of our brain. When advertisers segment their target audiences and understand their behavioral patterns, they can team up with copywriters, designers, and videomakers to create ad guidelines. These guidelines can define the best emotional triggers, be they text, colors, or video storytelling.

Put another way, marketers can learn to generate certain emotions that are likely to lead to an increase in the probability of a purchase, or some other targeted action. In order to achieve this, they choose one of the two paths: a direct path and a more roundabout method.

A direct path will focus on convincing the audience to invest time and energy into the ad – that is, the viewer will be more inclined to research the ad, look into the offer, etc. This means that more of a logical process occurs once the ad has settled into the viewer’s mind.

The more roundabout way, on the other hand, refers to situations when a viewer makes a decision based on superficial estimations, aka cues, without applying too much logical effort. These cues might involve particular sounds, colors, graphic elements that stimulate certain emotions. This way the rest of the content might stay unnoticed.

Depending on the target audience, industry, and type of product, we might try to target the emotion that is best suited for our business goals, and try to evoke this emotion in further marketing activities. The selected emotions will also influence the design code, the tone of voice in texts, and the media content or your project.

Why Is Emotional Targeting Important? 

Firstly, emotional targeting is great for finding ‘core’ audiences, as the people who respond best to an ad will be the first to trust in your brand. The first thing that stands out about your ad will be remembered best after all, so these first impressions are critically important. remembered best. And if this encounter creates an emotion (even if it’s negative), it will form a strong impression and enhance the notability of the ad or your brand. 

Secondly, emotional targeting encourages people to make decisions based on their instinct and intuition rather than reason. Remember the last expensive thing you bought? Was it completely necessary, or was it rather inspired by the anticipation of the positive emotions that product is associated with? Of course, it’s possible that you did some comparisons, selected the best offer, and looked up all the specifications. But what really made you click that “Buy” button? 

Emotional buying and emotional selling are a big marketing deal in advertising! The desire to feel self-respect, serenity, love, to feel attractive, or to be accepted – these and other powerful emotion-driven requests are often carefully crafted for brands by the knowledge hands of a skilled marketer. Dr. Peter Noel Murray, a practicing psychologist, believes that people tend to build their decisions based on emotion, more readily than on information. Emotional content has been shown to perform two times better than rational messages. 

Emotional Targeting Action Plan

Advertisers have many ways to target their ads through emotion. Here’s a quick 4-step guide on how to do this:

1. Find out who your audience is. This is an important part of any type of business, but it’s especially crucial when we talk about marketing activities. Before you select an emotion to embed into your campaigns, you need to know what kind of content your audience enjoys, their pains, their interests, and desires. Adjusting to these details in your creative message will pay off handsomely. 

2. Be client-oriented. Emotional targeting conversion heavily depends on optimizations and strategies for interaction with audiences. Instead of listing your services, skills, or product benefits, try to show that your brand understands and cares about its customers. Remember the Dove Real Beauty Sketches campaign? By showcasing the real beauty of real women, Dove illustrated how well they appreciate and recognize ‘ordinary’ elegance. Do not forget about highlighting usability and a user-friendly interface if your product is web-based.  

3. Choose your brand colors. Colors are tied to emotions. As the color psychology suggests, light blue and green tones calm, red and orange excite. Color management is widely used in interior design, cinematography, art, sport, you name it. But colors can also be associated with brands. We all know Coca-Cola or Uber and the colors of these companies. And these colors transmit messages. Red puts us in mind of a festive mood, energy, or excitement, while black stands for comfort, modesty, and reliability.

4. Tell a story. Stories are the tools to make your brand come alive and to humanize it in the eyes of your audience. Through brand stories, we transmit emotions related to our brand identity. When you have defined your audience and selected an emotion to associate with your brand, it’s time to transmit it through a corresponding video. John Lewis does it well with their famed Christmas adverts. Each video illustrates the meaning of Christmas gifts in our relationships, and tells us that it’s not really about the shopping – it’s about understanding and caring.

Why Video Ads Are the Best Drivers of Emotion 

Text, photographs, art, and sounds – they can all call forth and influence emotions. But video is the uncontested leader in evoking emotion because the video medium can showcase multiple sources of sensory data simultaneously, сreating a more immersive experience. Videos that are aimed at eliciting an emotional response can leverage both the direct emotional targeting path, and the roundabout method, making it a convenient tool for advertising. A survey in Advertiser Perceptions showed that 52% of video advertisers plan to increase their video ad spend even more in the next 12 months, showing that they are quickly recognizing the value of that format.

Video advertising can create a strong emotional reaction, such as joy, rage, laughter, or depression. These emotions lead viewers to a stronger connection with a brand since collectively experienced emotional events naturally cause people to rally around a symbol. Nike in their Find Your Greatness campaign tried to bring out empathy, motivation, and pride by putting a spotlight on casual sports activities.

What makes videos good for emotional advertising? First of all, videos are perfect for telling a short visual story and as we know – storytelling is the best way to project emotions. Videos are perfect solutions to reflect the values, pains, and desires of people. It’s easier to believe a video than text or sound. Another thing videos are great at is creating memories. An ad has more chances to remain inside the viewer’s head when reinforced with a bright picture.

Takeaways

Emotions and feelings impact our behavior more than logical thinking. That’s why our momentary decisions are often made on a subconscious, intuitive level. If advertisers aim to seize people’s attention, increase revenues, and be remembered, they must take into account this characteristic of the human brain. This is exceptionally important in the age of programmatic, retargeting, and other advertising techniques that force people to look at the same ads over and over again. 

Psychology is the master science for marketing studies and ad campaign management. By utilizing strategies that are reinforced with scientific facts and statistics, marketers can take their efforts to a whole new level, making ads more effective than ever.  

Emotional targeting is the approach that benefits most from psychology. But before we can start using it, we need to take care of lots of details first. These include defining your target audience, creating brand stories, choosing the right color theme, designing creative messages, and other, more technical aspects to stimulate the right emotions that will drive sales.