The Psychology of Branding | How Emotions Influence Buying Decisions
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Unlock the secret to creating an irresistible brand by harnessing the power of emotions. Join Victoria as she returns for Season 9 of The Branding Business School podcast and reveals how top brands like Apple, Nike, and Starbucks build unbreakable bonds with consumers through emotional connections. This episode uncovers the fascinating role of the limbic system in decision-making, proving that feelings often overpower logic in consumer choices. By emphasizing the emotional benefits of your products or services, you can surpass the competition and secure customer loyalty like never before.
Navigate the emotional landscape of branding, exploring how key feelings such as happiness, fear, belonging, trust, and status drive purchasing decisions. Dive into the strategies companies use to leverage happiness, or even fear, or how Lululemon fosters community among younger audiences. We also highlight the importance of social proof and community engagement, giving you actionable insights to ensure your brand messaging creates the desired emotional impact. Whether you're a high-ticket service provider or a budding brand, these insights will help you resonate deeply with your audience and stand out in the marketplace.
People Buy Feelings
Kicking off Season 9 of The Branding Business School Podcast with this simple truth: People don’t buy products or services anymore; they buy feelings, experiences, and transformations. The brands that we love and the ones that we stay loyal to have mastered the art of emotional connection.
The Science and Psychology Behind Emotional Selling
There is a part of our brain known as the limbic system that controls emotions, memories, and decision-making. Unlike the neocortex, the part of our brain that’s responsible for reasoning, language, and analytical thinking, the limbic system doesn’t process language which means that we don’t make decisions based on logic. We make them based on how we feel, even when we think we’re being logical. This is why people often struggle to explain why they made a certain decision. They might be able to rationalize it after the fact with logic, but the actual decision was driven by emotion.
This is crucial for branding and marketing because it means that people don’t just choose a product, service, or business based purely on the facts and the features. They choose it based on how that product, that service, that brand made them feel. Storytelling, visuals, and your brand voice matter, because these are the things that tap into the emotional part of the brain and can influence decisions in ways that logic alone cannot.
Emotions that Drive Buying Decisions
Happiness: If your brand is about making people feel happy, there’s a good chance that you’re going to serve a large audience. Example brands like Coca-Cola, Disney, and McDonald’s use bright colors and have upbeat messaging for this reason! Their imagery is joyful, full of happy emotions, smiling faces, people getting together and laughing over a Coke, or a child experiencing Disney for the first time. These brands have made people feel happy for decades and their loyal audiences are proof of that.
Fear and Anxiety: Insurance companies or Cyber Security brands use these emotions when selling to their customers. They use fear to highlight problems and then they position their products as the solution to those problems. Both fear and anxiety can be a big motivator for people to take action, and that’s why brands will tap into this.
Belonging and Connection: Community driven brands build on exclusivity to make people feel like they’re a part of something bigger. When you buy from these brands,you are joining a lifestyle. A great brand example of this is Lululemon. When you buy from them you definitely feel like you’re joining an exclusive community and that has always been intentional and strategic.
Trust and Security: If people do not trust your brand, they will not buy from it, and the higher the price point, the more trust is required to purchase. This emotion is a big one for service providers. Testimonials are a great way to build this, using your social proof, providing guarantees, and just being transparent. Nobody wants to be sold to, we want to opt into something that we see value in, so this is why transparency is huge when it comes to building the trust and security emotion that drives buyer decisions.
Status: Brands that sell status are also selling exclusivity, a certain lifestyle. If someone were to buy into a brand with status, then they can imagine themselves being among a certain kind of people and a certain type of lifestyle they live.
Now that we know these 5 different types of emotions that drive buyer decisions, as a brand, determine which one is most relevant to what you’re trying to sell and which angle you want to use to craft your brand messaging. But just because you choose one doesn’t mean that you have to neglect all the other emotions, because at the end of the day, when the analytical thinking does kick in and we start to think logically, we are going to address the other emotions. Do you trust the brand? Will it make you feel like you’re a part of something bigger? Will it make you happy? It’s definitely important to touch on all of these different emotions that people buy off of when selling your service or product, but it’s likely that there is ONE that you want to really build your brand around. Ask yourself, “how does your brand make people feel and more importantly, how do you want them to feel?” Once you answer this question, you can start making strategic decisions about your marketing, design choices, and the words you use on your website, to better help people feel the way we want them to feel when they’re interacting with your brand.
A great example of this is Rel Eve Co., who created a phenomenal subscription-based period pampering kit that would get delivered during your time of the month, every month. Beyond the product itself, she also created this group for you to belong to, filled with resources and information for you to reference. This is a great example of choosing belonging and connection to help drive buyer decisions.
Intentionally Build Emotion Into Your Brand
Storytelling
A great way to start to do this is with your brand story! People connect with stories, not sales pitches, so share your why, your journey, and what your brand stands for. Storytelling has been around for centuries and it’s not going anywhere. Figure out how to turn your brand into a story and a lot of times that starts with you and why you started your business. Donald Miller is a great resource for anything related to storytelling with your brand.
Visual Identity
Enter BrandWell! Colors, fonts, and imagery all create a very emotional response from the people that are viewing them. Every color and font has a psychology of emotion tied to it, which is why it is so important that when you’re hiring somebody to design your website or logo, that they understand these things and are trained in brand strategy and psychology. Making intentional choices with your brand colors and fonts when designing your visual identity will help you to connect on an emotional level with your audience.
Brand Messaging and Voice
The words you use matter. You need to know how your brand voice sounds and you need to be consistent with that. You want to make sure that your brand voice aligns with the emotions that you want to evoke. When people don’t do this and they don’t think critically about their brand voice, there’s going to be a big disruption in the cohesiveness of your brand. Everything needs to align in order to create a brand that really connects on an emotional level in order to build that trust with your audience. There needs to be a seamless transition from each of these pieces: from the product or the service, to the messaging that you’re using to sell it, to the tone that the messaging is delivered in, to the visual identity of what it looks like on the packaging, logo, website, etc.! They all really need to be consistent. Your messaging and your voice are great ways to infuse emotion into what you’re selling!
Customer Experience
How people feel when they interact with your brand, from your website design to your customer service, this can shape their emotional connection to your business. This is an area of focus for BrandWell and one that they’ve done well time and time again, which is why clients are loyal to BrandWell and why it’s possible to increase pricing year after year, without losing customers to the competition. They have connected emotionally with their clients through their customer experience and developed a sense of trust. Because of this, they go on to tell all their friends about BrandWell, they share on Instagram how excited they are to work with BrandWell and they come back to BrandWell time and time again.
Social Proof and Community
Get your testimonials! If you want to learn more about how to ask for reviews for your business, listen to Episode 126 here! BrandWell has over 145 Star Reviews on Google and paragraphs of text with people sharing their experience with BrandWell, and this is the best social proof that one could ask for!
Final Thoughts
Remember, branding is not just about your logos and aesthetics. It’s about creating an emotional connection to your audience. Your logos and aesthetics are a part of creating that connection, but it’s not the only part. The strongest brands know how to tap into emotions like happiness, belonging, trust, aspiration for status. The good news is that you don’t need to be a billion dollar company in order to do this. Small brands can master this sometimes more easily than big brands because they have more close contact with customers. Start by understanding what emotions you want your audience to feel and then weave them into every part of your brand, from your visuals to your messaging, to your customer experience.
Victoria’s Challenge to You
Evaluate your existing brand with every area we talked about. Your messaging, how you sound in your emails, the tone that you’re using on your website, your logos, your Instagram grid, the photos you’re using on your website, look at it all. What emotions are you currently evoking?
If you don’t know, ask a friend, ideally a friend that would fall into your target audience. Ask them “What do you feel when you interact with all these things?”. Are they aligned with the brand experience you want to create for your customers? When you get this right, when you understand brand psychology and you build a brand that connects emotionally to your audience, you can increase your prices time and time again and not lose your customers to the competition. That’s what sets businesses apart.
Key Quotes
“When you can make the emotional benefit of what you are selling outweigh the logical cons that someone may perceive in working with you... You will close the sale every single time.”
Victoria Marcouillier
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