When helping clients run social media campaigns, a question I get a lot is how they can increase conversions. Sure, it’s great being able to engage people, but getting them to buy your product and be loyal to it, is another story. And at the end of the day, all brands use social media as part of their marketing arsenal in order to get customers.
So my answer varies depending on each case, but I think there is one very important reason that is often ignored. It has to do with a brand’s ability to relate to users on a deeper and more emotional level.
Essentially, it’s a case of emotional targeting. Quite simply, people respond more favourably to content that appeals to specific emotions. If I were to choose one specific emotion, it would of course be happiness. If I were to choose a specific type, it would have to be positive. Yes! Happy people buy things! I don’t think you have to be a marketing guru to realise this. And of course, this doesn’t only apply to paid campaigns. But it has been proven many times, that emotional impact is directly proportional to a person’s “intent to buy”.
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Creating Connections & Communicating
Why? Well, because it creates connections. By using emotional targeting, brands have the opportunity to “speak to the user” at whole different level. Thus, we need to create campaigns that “touch” people and don’t try to simply “sell” an idea or product.
It’s therefore not always as straightforward as tweaking a product or service and making it perfect for a specific audience. That’s not to say that we should not approach the product itself as a source of emotional responses. It’s how we communicate it though that plays a major role in evoking those. A product is an ecosystem and we should not forget that.
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Being Authentic
We talk a lot about “authenticity”; but if our messages are all about convincing someone and making them subscribe to our view of the world, we are not communicating. If we sit down and listen, we can draw much more insight into how to speak to people without alienating them. This also plays heavily into how we A/B test our efforts; we should be testing behaviours and emotional responses. These are much more actionable.
Consumers have become very good at seeing through clever marketing ideas. If they feel that they are being manipulated, they are gone. Brands need to care about people. And people will love them for it.
Oh! And they will buy what they LOVE!
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So, be creative, a little crazy, make people happy, appeal to their humanity… Show that you care! As a friend says quite often (and I agree with her)… “Speak Human, Win The Internet”.
I agree! What about you?
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