Emotions Over Transactions - Rekindle the Humane Factor in Direct Selling Business

Imagine you are speeding up with your morning chores to get to work on time and a package arrives at your doorstep. A Christmas hamper and goodies from one of the brands from which you have been shopping for quite some time. No matter how busy you are, you will pause to check what they have sent you, and you will feel elated, happy, valued, and whatnot!

Remember, the package wasn’t delivered to you by any of the company representatives, nor did you receive an email or a text message notifying you that they were sending you a package. But it came to you as a ‘surprise’ and there are various other feelings that were evoked with that small gesture — Surprise, which struck the awe factor and amazement, joy or happiness, that evoked love and ecstasy, and, most importantly, trust, which built acceptance and admiration towards the brand.

Now that your day is made with this surprise gift, you are sure to tell your friends and colleagues about this, probably make a social media post on this, and definitely many Instagram stories tagging the brand name.

Alright, the purpose is served! You, as a customer, are happy and the brand has won your heart!

Knowingly or unknowingly what is the key factor with which the result was driven in due course of the process? Well, it was your EMOTION!!

Emotional marketing – the in thing!

In the wise words of American author Seth Godin,

“What people want is the extra, the emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.”

Emotional marketing in its plain term is to persuade customers to buy something driving their emotions and forming a robust connection or relationship. Brands usually trigger these emotions through sentimental or moving advertisements that give a certain feeling to the audience in a way that they wouldn’t forget the product or the brand. This will motivate them to click, purchase, visit, call, or any such activities that will bring them closer to the brand ultimately increasing the sales and revenue of the brand.

This emotional connect can be built through creative campaigns that radiate a strong message which speaks of the brand's ethics, through print/video/outdoor advertisements, brand videos, podcasts, and all digital touchpoints. There have been successful thought-provoking marketing campaigns encapsulating customer emotions and feelings that have driven businesses by manifolds. Jewelry ads without even showcasing a piece of jewelry, airlines ads that pan through passenger emotions and never showing an aircraft, etc are genius levels of emotional marketing that makes the brand tangible, approachable, and believable for customers.

Emotional marketing is pure storytelling. Like a parent who yells and screams at their kids during their daily hustle and at the end of the day sitting by their bedside explaining how they could have behaved better citing examples, brands tell us stories in a slow and poised tone trying to get the message right into our brains. We might have come across the brand and the message quite a lot of times, but what struck us now could be the emotional approach that made us stop, listen, and get connected with them.

Direct selling businesses since time immemorial have been human-centric and hence, needless to say, the amount of emotional storytelling through which brands have built rapport with their distributor and customer crowd is innumerable. What facilitates buying processes in the direct selling sector these days is the emotional marketing strategies that were created by putting digital marketing and neuromarketing together.

Neuromarketing - the science of emotional marketing

Emotional marketing is a layman’s term but neuromarketing is one step ahead of it which could quite literally ‘get into your nerves’. It is a combination of neuroscience, psychology, sociology, and anthropology. What works for customers of a brand might not work for the same brand’s customers in the other part of the world. There are various factors that influence customers’ thought processes, behaviors, and psychology to make a marketing campaign successful.

Direct selling businesses have always leveraged their human connections to understand what the customer wants through their buying behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. The customer-distributor meets that happen quite often online and offline are a great way for the brand to get a broader understanding of how people expect the brand to treat them and foresee the customer’s journey with the brand.

Off late, direct selling companies seem to be investing heavily in data analytics and data integration techniques to keep up with market trends and customer interests. But, neuromarketing covers a larger picture providing holistic market evaluation, drivers, trends, restraints, and a broader analysis of the key segments and factors that play a significant role in the market.

How to effectively execute emotional marketing?

An emotional advertisement or content is said to bring 23% more sales than standard content. Here's why:

• Connect emotion to your direct selling brand – As I said earlier, your brand ad need not necessarily show your products. Instead, it could portray an emotion that will place the brand in the back of your customer’s minds for a longer period, and, when they see your product, they will quickly connect that emotion with your brand.
• Drive Sales – A brand that can linger with customer emotions and feelings is believed to cater to them rightly. Direct selling brands clearly state their stand so that their customers feel confident and happy about the products that are being offered to them. This could influence customers’ purchasing decisions and thus enable more sales.
• Inspires Customer Loyalty - When a brand fulfills its customer's needs and wants to strike their emotions and feelings, the emotional connection is sure to stay. Customers who are content with your products or service are sure to spread the word far more effectively than any other advertisements. Loyal customers could be your brand advocates who will not only come back to you for repeated purchases, but also recommend you to their kith and kin.

2023 ahead, more emotions galore?

For sure! Emotions are humane and, despite the number of technology and innovations popping up each day, to get your customers closer to your brand, you definitely would need to connect with them emotionally. Your logo, website, the content that goes into it, the color tone, your social media materials, and even your chatbots could evoke some level of emotion in your customer’s brain. Drawing insights from these could help brands decide on how to structure their strategies to improve customer engagement and experience.

With emotional or neuromarketing, brands can actually examine your and my subconscious mind without our knowledge from the way we scroll through feeds of various apps.