Why Emotional Branding Matters To EVERY Business

5 actions businesses can take in order to gain market share through emotional branding

If salt is simply salt, then why do consumers pay up to 30% more for the Maldon Sea Salt brand? According to brand experts it’s because we are irrationally patterned to our brand preferences … driven by feelings, not facts. And this is the premise behind emotional branding.

What is emotional branding?  

Consumer centric marketing appealing directly to a consumer’s emotional state, needs and aspirations. 

The GDR mEDIA Group team recently attended the Retail Leaders Summit on the Gold Coast and ran a roundtable discussion on the importance of emotional branding for business success. Attended by more than 30 business leaders, below is a round-up of the session.

From brainstorms to boardroom decisions, emotional branding starts with a simple question: “How does it make you feel?” Purchase decisions are driven by emotion as much as by intellect. In order to be effective, your brand must reach people’s hearts and make a meaningful, emotional connection. That is, your brand needs to matter to your prospective customer.

Five top actions businesses can and should take in order to gain market share through emotional branding:

Action 1: Discover what actually motivates customers.

You’ll most likely discover that it’s not just the functional features or benefits of your product/service, or the obvious, rational needs customers express.

Action 2: Isolate the moments that matter most.

Determine the key touchpoints in the customer journey as they engage with your brand – or with your competitors’ brand. Examples might include a TV ad, website visit, Facebook page, or storefront encounter. Some touch points matter more than others in your customer’s experience. Optimise those moments, and you’ll optimise your brand’s performance.

Action 3: Spend quality time with customers.

Whether through performance metrics, focus groups, or A/B testing, strive to understand not only what they’re doing, but why they’re doing it. Understanding what drives them may reveal deep insights about their needs and wants – and that information can give you a competitive advantage.

Action 4: Obsess about customers’ experience with your brand.

When all is said and done, brand loyalty is achieved through brand experience. You must find an authentic, meaningful difference that will demonstrate why your brand matters to your customer. This will help to develop a powerful and lasting emotional connection between your customer and your brand. After all, what your brand does is more important than what your brand says.

Action 5: Expand innovation boundaries.

Use a deep understanding of your customers’ experience to think beyond product development. Innovations that enhance experience or service levels succeed more, cost less, and have greater impact than new products.

Some of favourite examples of emotional branding ads:

Westpac

John Lewis

How can GDR help

Emotional branding can play a crucial role in helping your brand grow. At GDR we have an in-house team that can help develop and execute an emotional branding marketing strategy that will elevate your brand and ultimately drive your sales growth.

We would love to help!