Advertising and emotions, they’re intrinsically linked.
If you’re feeling happy, you might decide to stroll home via a sunlight street. But if you’d been harassed by a dog as a kid, that same sunlight street might trigger deep emotions of fear, and you’d take the long way round instead. There may be logical arguments to be made either way, but in the moment, the decision is driven by your emotional state.
Different emotions affect decisions in different ways. If you’re feeling sad, you might be more willing to settle for things that aren’t in your favour, such as not putting yourself forward to develop your business by networking, or remaining in an unhealthy working relationship with a staff member or client. But sadness can also make you more generous — research shows that unhappy people are more likely to be in favour of increasing benefits to welfare recipients than angry people, who are lacking in empathy.
Emotional decision making can affect not just the outcome of the decision, but the speed at which you make it. Obviously in business, decisions are made quickly, sometime irrationally and often at great pace. To be aware of this critical element is a powerful opportunity for business decision makers.
Gut feeling plays a huge part in the decision-making process, but at times may be steering you wrong — it might lead to poor judgement, unconscious bias and recklessness or risk-aversion. There are occasions when we should pay attention to our gut instinct, though there are times when a business owner or senior manager needs to step back and not react from gut instinct and consult a less emotive response. We’ve all woken up on the wrong side of the bed, right?
Both emotion and logic have a role to play in helping you as a business owner make positive decisions. If you understand where your emotions come from and start to notice how they affect your thinking and behaviour, you’re able to practice managing your response and learn to make better choices.
Harness human emotion, channel it through technology and create mutually beneficial experiences between business, brand and customer.
This is the COG Branding approach to building success for our small business clients, and we look to solve this equation passionately and with vigour.
We’re all about brand, and connecting it to the business itself. We know a brand can be a powerful tool for a business as it stimulates people emotionally to make decisions.
A brand can influence a person emotionally in several ways. For example, a brand can create a feeling of trust and credibility, which can make a person feel more comfortable and confident about purchasing a product or service. A brand can also create a sense of belonging or connection, which can make a person feel more emotionally invested in the brand and its products or services.
Additionally, a brand can evoke certain emotions through its messaging, imagery, and brand design, such as happiness, excitement, or nostalgia, which can make a person more likely to engage with the brand and its products or services.
Overall, a strong brand can create an emotional connection with customers, which can be a powerful driver of loyalty and sales. And it’s for this reason COG Branding are dedicated to brand building for all small business types. We know it’s our job to tap the power of emotion and ensure it’s connected to our clients businesses.
So, what are five ways a business with a strong brand build a relationship with a customer?
A business with a strong brand can build a relationship with a customer in several ways. Here are five initial ideas:
- Provide excellent customer service: Providing excellent customer service is a key part of building a relationship with customers. Make sure that every interaction a customer has with your business is positive and memorable, and consider using customer feedback to improve your products and services.
- Communicate with customers regularly: To build a relationship with customers, it’s important to communicate with them regularly. This can include sending email marketing newsletters or other updates about your business, responding to customer inquiries or concerns, and engaging with customers on social media.
- Offer personalised experiences: Personalisation can be a powerful tool for building relationships with customers. Consider using customer data to create personalised experiences, such as personalised product recommendations or tailored marketing messages.
- Create a loyalty program: Loyalty programs can help businesses build relationships with customers by rewarding them for their loyalty. This can include offering rewards or discounts for repeat business, or providing exclusive perks or benefits to loyal customers.
- Show appreciation for customers: Showing appreciation for customers is a simple but effective way to build a relationship with them. Consider thanking customers for their business, sending personalised thank-you notes, or offering special deals or promotions to show your appreciation.
How much does emotion influence decision making?
Emotion plays a significant role in decision making. Research has shown that emotional factors can influence the way we make decisions, often in ways that we are not fully aware of. For example, emotions can impact our perceptions of risk and reward, our priorities and values, and our reactions to different options.
Emotions can also influence our decision-making processes, such as by biasing our judgments or affecting our ability to weigh different options objectively. Additionally, emotions can affect our behaviour, such as by influencing how we interact with others or how we respond to different situations. Overall, while rational factors are also important in decision making, emotion plays a significant role in shaping our choices and actions.
How does advertising stimulate customers to make decisions?
Advertising can stimulate customers to make decisions in several ways. For example, advertising can create awareness of a product or service, which can make customers more likely to consider purchasing it. Advertising can also provide information about a product or service, such as its features, benefits, and price, which can help customers make an informed decision.
To add to this, advertising can create a sense of urgency or scarcity, which can motivate customers to make a decision quickly, before the opportunity passes. Advertising can also create a feeling of trust or credibility, which can make customers more confident in their decision to purchase. Traditionally brand marketing is based on delivering a creative aesthetic that aims to evoke an emotional response, and the stronger the response the more successful the brand marketing is. Overall, advertising can play a key role in stimulating customers to make purchasing decisions.
As a leading Sydney brand marketing agency, COG Branding sets out to create a synergy between brand and business for our small business clients, we often challenge our clients existing behaviours that may be counter productive to this goal. Our positive influence has proven to shift business owners’ perceptions of how to use the levers of brand and marketing activities to create a long term sustainable position for their brand, and how it can and should be a key function of how their business model generates consistent successful results.
How COG Branding creates a sustainable position for small businesses is via customised frameworks that include the most relevant brand and marketing strategies combined with the most appropriate software solutions that simply fit our clients reality. If you’re thinking of enhancing your brand reach out to us today. (02) 9523 6007.
Many brands have understood the power of emotion and take full advantage of it. Do you want to be one of them?
Below is a brand study by the Sydney Design agency COG Design. Click to download “Brand Personality – How The Best Brands Harness Emotion To Deliver Powerful Business Solutions”
