If you’re not connecting with your target audience on a deep emotional level you’re most likely wasting your time, effort and resources.
While communicating tangible product elements, such as value, quality, capability, service support and outcomes are an important part of the marketing message, to gain attention, spark interest, stimulate desire and drive action, requires making a strong emotional connection by communicating how someone will feel as result of using/experiencing a product.
There are several human needs models that help us to understand the emotional triggers that drive people to seek out particular products/experiences in order to evoke specific feelings.
Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, for example, suggests that people are motivated to satisfy particular needs, starting with basic physiological needs such as the need for food, shelter and water, and progressing to satisfy more complex psychological needs such as safety, love/belonging, self-esteem and self-actualisation. All of these needs, even the physiological ones, are linked to emotional wellbeing.
Similarly, world-renowned coach Tony Robbins believes that humans have six core needs that drive behaviour – certainty, variety, belonging, significance, growth and contribution.
A useful way of identifying which particular core need or combination of core needs your target audience is seeking to satisfy is to ask yourself, ‘what is it that my target audience wants to feel as a result of using/experiencing my product or service?’.
The following provides a guide to linking core needs with feelings:
- A need for certainty/comfort (to feel more secure, stable, in control) could translate to ‘I want to feel safe’.
- A need for uncertainty/variety (to feel excitement, drama, exhilarated) could translate to ‘I want to feel adventurous’.
- A need for love/connection (to feel intimate, validated, connected, engaged) could translate to ‘I want to feel like I belong’.
- A need for significance (to feel important, pride, valued, wanted) could translate to ‘I want to feel worthy’.
- A need for growth (to feel wise, intellectually challenged) could translate to ‘I want to feel empowered’.
- A need for contribution (to feel a greater sense of meaning, purpose, whole) could translate to ‘I want to feel like I make a difference’.
Once you understand the core need/s your target audience is seeking to satisfy, you can craft powerful marketing messages that will resonate on a much deeper level.
For instance, an adventure tourism company could appeal to a person’s need for variety/uncertainty and desire to feel excitement or exhilaration. Or a prestige watch maker could appeal to a person’s need for significance and desire to feel important or worthy.
Conveying the emotional experience your product or service provides by articulating the specific feelings evoked as a result of satisfying particular core needs, is a highly emotionally-intelligent way of crafting your marketing messages.
Not only does it show a deep understanding of the target market’s need/desire, it also makes your marketing messages more human and relatable .
Want some help crafting emotionally-intelligent marketing messages? Contact Ros via email or phone on 1800 677 600.
©Ros Weadman 2022 Ros Weadman empowers purpose-driven leaders and organisations to think bigger picture, strategically-align their brand to a higher purpose and enhance their reputation through communications that engage hearts and minds. Ros’s new book ‘Enhance Your Reputation’ is out now. Order your copy here.
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