Emotion.
The single ingredient that makes Jake buy the beard oil (he doesn’t need) to impress the girl who hasn’t replied to his text in days.
Emotion, when woven into content, creates a connection between the product and prospect.
Without an array of emotions, prospects are not moved to act on what your content is prompting them to do. Creating content without emotions is like having the right recipe, for let’s say, chicken, but not making it tasty enough for a second bite.
Take the fictional Smiths for example.
On the Smiths’ 25th wedding anniversary, Mr. Smith wanted to do something sweet for Mrs. Smith. The septuagenarian recalled the conversation he had been having with his young neighbor on a love-letter writing service. After answering some questions about the reason he needed the service, he waited for the AI to create the perfect love letter for his septuagenarian wife.
Suffice it to say Mrs. Smith knew right away that the dispassionate card her husband handed to her was not of his making.
Decisions are largely emotion-based. and brands would do well to know this.
Injecting Emotions In Your Content
Whether it’s a company website or you just want to make money blogging, people relate to your content because of the emotions it evokes in them. To get customers to make purchasing decisions, emotions — and not logic — should be used. This doesn’t mean facts will not be deployed in the use of those emotions. It is how those facts evoke feelings of awe, sadness, happiness, laughter, and belonging, and how they are used to convince the buyer to make a purchasing decision. If you want to learn how to write high-engaging blog posts, web content, or copy, then this is the guide for you.
According to this research, injecting emotions in your content increases the chances of it going viral by 63%.
Image credit: Buzzsumo
How To Inject Emotions in Your Content
Create content directed at “one customer” instead of a group`
One of the mistakes copywriters make, Neil Patel states, is not using data to define their target audience before creating content. Not everyone with purchasing power is a prospective user of your product or service.
This is where a defined target audience comes in. A defined target audience makes it easy for a customer profile to be created. The customer profile segregates your target audience to specifics of who your ideal customer is while defining their buying patterns. With a defined target audience firmly in place, it is easy to put a name to intending buyers.
For example, specifically targeting a married John, 32M, father of two, who likes to fly business class, and belongs to a couple of golf clubs around the country is easy to write even for a copywriter who engages in affiliate marketing without a website. When content is written for ‘one customer’ in mind, it makes it easier to be emotionally expressive than generic.
If you are unsure of how to create a customer avatar, speak to industry influencers or engage prospective customers, there are some of the easiest affiliate programs you can explore.
Discover the pain points of your ‘one customer’
Pain points are the specific challenges your products or services try to solve for the user. Discovering the pain points of your ‘one customer’ makes it easy to create content that revolves around their buying choices.
Take Stacey, for example. She is a single mother of two rowdy children under the age of five. Your product is a vacuum cleaner about to be introduced to the market. Instead of highlighting the features of a vacuum cleaner or going on about its shiny new parts, emotive content is one that highlights the challenges she might be facing juggling kids with work, and how the vacuum cleaner can alleviate some of those difficulties.
So instead of saying the vacuum cleaner has XYZ capacity, using emotions to sell would be reiterating that the XYZ capacity of the vacuum cleaner makes chores easier and faster. thereby giving her more time to rest before the kids are up.
Who wouldn’t like an extra minute or two in bed on a Monday morning?
Tell a story
Storytelling is one of the most effective tools employed in copywriting. It is one of the ways to keep readers engaged. For instance, this article has introduced you to fictional characters like Mr. John, Ms. Stacey, and the Septuagenarian Smiths. You feel like you know them to an extent. The goal is to create a memorable connection with your audience.
By making your content relatable through storytelling, your audience feels like you are speaking directly to them instead of casting a net into the sea and hoping to catch any kind of fish.
Sharing business stories, reviews from customers, and how far the company has come introduces vulnerability, thereby activating the emotions of the audience the content is made for.
Embolden your audience
When your product or service makes your ideal customer feel emboldened if only they get to purchase it, you might have a fat balance sheet on your hands at the end of the business year. Most people want to get the girl with that spicy cologne. They want to use your brand of shaving stick and feel powerful. They want to look corporate and professional by getting that virtual background for an upcoming meeting. They want to rev that car so as to have the neighbors looking out of their windows, saying what a catch Tom is!
When brands explore the innate desire of people to feel special, desired, and exclusive, they awaken emotions that translate to sales. Encourage your target audience to join your exclusive club by introducing loyalty programs, access to networking events, and exclusivity.
Leverage the fear of missing out
Although life is full of regrets, no one wants to miss out on an opportunity that could have been oh-so-good. Research has it that 90% of people who suffered from fear of missing out felt envious, sad, disappointed, or jealous. FOMO as it is popularly called, ignites a sense of urgency or anxiety, thereby causing people to take action to avoid missing out.
One proven way to do this is to place a ticking clock on an offer or limit its availability. Another way is to introduce a wait list or get people to scramble for a product by releasing it on a specific day of the week or year in a limited edition.
Conclusively, emotion, when utilized properly can make all the difference in your content. The emotions necessarily don’t have to be positive: it could be happiness, awe, laughter, sadness, or fear but the most important thing is that it causes whoever is reading to take action.
Related reading: The Ultimate Guide to Copywriting
About the author
Sam O’Brien is the Chief Marketing Officer for Affise—a Global SaaS Partner Marketing Solution. He is a mobile affiliate marketing expert with a product management and design background. Sam has a passion for innovation, growth, and marketing technology. Here is his LinkedIn. He has also written content for Nextdoor and Cincopa.
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