How to Use Emotion to Drive Action in Content Marketing

Emotion Drives Action in Marketing

The phrase “Sell the Sizzle” is often thrown around in sales and marketing yet how many brands are actually employing this tool thoughtfully, tactfully and measurably?

What does it even mean: “Sell the Sizzle”? Other comparative terms are “Sell the hole not the drill bit”, “Features vs Benefits” and “Green Brain Marketing”.

Green brain is a reference to the right, emotional side of our brain which drives action or purchase decisions, as opposed to the left, logical side of the brain which justifies those decisions.

People buy emotionally. They buy to fulfill a perceived need. They want to know “What’s in it for me?”

People do not buy a product or a feature, they buy a solution. They do not buy drill bits, they buy holes. They do not buy leather seats, they buy comfort and image. And they buy because something resonates with their values, beliefs and desires.

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How to harness that emotion

Nowhere is the power of harnessing that emotion more important than on social media and search engines.

Brands have only a few seconds at most to capture attention – on any medium or platform – and boring feature-specific content will struggle. If you’re talking about your product or service and seeing lackluster engagement, try changing that copy to tie into emotional purchase drivers.

This is the same premise of good content marketing which should be fulfilling informational desires.

Consider the yoga studio that is seeking to attract new customers. Then consider why people come to that studio – it might be to reduce stress, eliminate back pain or improve their performance in another sport. These are your emotional drivers.

There are yoga studios on every corner, all offer similar services. Talking about those services is far less likely to inspire action than tapping into what drives people to take action.

And with digital marketing, messages can be created and tailored specifically to audiences for whom these emotional drivers will resonate. Whether it is keyword targeting on search engines or interest-based targeting on social media, match your message to the audience, then track, measure, compare and refine.

Tapping into people’s emotional drivers can completely revolutionise your content marketing. However it does require time, thought and effort and so it is often neglected. With marketers and business-owners often time-poor they revert to creating one broad message that often focuses on their product or service.

However broad brush strokes will struggle to penetrate, even if they are emotional driven, simply because people have different drivers. Take the time to tailor your messages to specific emotional desires and tap into your target market’s green brain – or employ a specialist to do it for you – and watch engagement soar.

DOWNLOAD our Complete Content Marketing Guide

The Complete Content Marketing Guide is a 30-page white paper detailing all aspects of developing, refining and implementing a content marketing and marketing automation strategy.

Content Marketing Guide

Content Marketing Strategy Development
Establishing Content Marketing Goals
Audience Analysis
Marketing Automation
Content Metrics and ROI
   – Digital Content Distribution:
   – Social Media
   – SEO
   – Video
   – E-Newsletters
   – Content Seeding and Amplification
Print Content Considerations
Legal considerations

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