Marketing Strategy:

Customer Value Proposition

Emotional Marketing

Chasing the "Share of Heart" of Your Prospective Customer

"Selling is the transfer of emotions."

22 Laws of Marketing: The Law of Heart (Emotion)

Marketing strategies without emotion will not work.

Emotion stimulates the mind 3000 times faster than rational thought. It's an emotional world we live in. Many people say we live in a rational world but nothing could be further from the truth. Emotions drive our behavior; the world is driven by emotions. Rational thought leads customers to be interested but it is emotion that sells. People really aren't much interested in attributes; they want to know if they can have a product that suits their personality. It is all about values.

Emotional marketing is better in many instances than rational marketing that focuses on product attributes. Capturing minds is one thing; capturing hearts is quite another. Build emotions in your marketing strategies; don't always chase "share of wallet – chase "share of heart". Employ strategies that would make decisions very emotionally driven and remove the rational questions that might drive the prospect elsewhere.

Highlight the Emotional Satisfaction Your Clients Will Get

No matter what your business is, if you are serving people, you need to be able to tap into the emotions that motivate them. Describe emotional gratification do your clients get from your services.

Example: Your clients feel a sense of "pride" because they have improved skills; "confidence" that they will provide better outcomes for their own customers; "relief" that they will more easily meet some legal requirement, "joy," etc.³

Use the Right Colors in Your Promotional Materials

Its very important to know which emotions or symbolizations will trigger your target audience to buy your product or service. The use of the right colors in your promotional materials – in your marketing brochures, your product packages, or on your web site – can actually increase your sales. When people see certain colors they can change their emotions or they can symbolize things related to the colors. For example, if you're selling a money-making product you should use green and brown colors, as they represent money and strength, and bring out the emotion of greed and comfort respectively.

 Case in Point  DuPont

A US-based multicultural team at DuPont gained around US$45 million in new business by changing the way decorating materials are developed and marketed. The changes included new colors that team members new, from their experience within other cultures, would appeal more to their overseas customers.⁶

Selling By Coaching

Treat your prospective customer as a player who wants to achieve extraordinary results. You are to help the player win. Listen to words, body language and emotions to understand the player's both conscious and unconscious needs.... More

Make Your Customers Laugh

Why would people want buy from you if they don't enjoy doing so? Making what you have to sell fun to buy is simply taking the whole process one step further. "If you can make your customers laugh, and excite them with your vision of what life can be, they are not going to walk into your outlets, but run into them. Running a successful business should be fun for you, and there's every reason why you should be able to communicate that sense of fun to your customers. Certainly, if you aren't having fun, you probably aren't running a successful business."²

The Art of Innovation: 9 Truths

By: Guy Kawasaki

• Don't be afraid to polarize people. Most companies want to create the holy grail of products that appeals to every demographic, social-economic background, and geographic location. To attempt to do so guarantees mediocrity. Instead, create great DICEE (Deep, Intelligent, Complete, Elegant, Emotive) products that make segments of people very happy. And fear not if these products make other segments unhappy. The worst case is to incite no passionate reactions at all, and that happens when companies try to make everyone happy... More

Bibliography:

1. "The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing in Asia", Al Ries, Jack Trout and Paul Tempora

2. "The Seven Deadly Skills of Competing", James Essinger & Helen Wylie

3. "Get Clear About Your Core Marketing Message," Martha Carnahan

4. "Winning Customers," Vadim Kotelnikov

5. "Strategies of Market Leaders," Vadim Kotelnikov