My Insights on Rational and Emotional Skew in Marketing
As the coronavirus created uncertainty in industries globally, companies must figure out how to ensure business continuity. The default response of every organization when the global outbreak hit is cutting costs, laying off people, and postponing some of the plans to endure the effects of the pandemic.
But to me, from the perspective of a CEO, it also presents an opportunity to grow when the economy rebounds, as it eventually will. There’s a way to come out of the crisis as a winner. In fact, 14% of companies accelerated their growth and increased profitability during the past four recessions.
My advice? Do the same for your business and use this as an opportunity to thrive.
Shifts to expect in marketing
With the global pandemic affecting every country and industry, it was easy to predict that the economic landscape would change. Transitions like this happen all the time, and I always tell business owners I advise that sales and marketing will continuously evolve. You can easily be on top today but down tomorrow, so you need to stay ahead of your competition regardless of how large the gap is between your business and theirs. Here are important shifts that will happen in marketing.
Relationships mean everything
Your products and services must deliver on what you promise to your customers, so they trust you and become loyal. Digital marketing is one of the techniques that businesses of all sizes use to engage and build a relationship with their customers. However, customers won’t follow (and will unlikely unfollow) companies that only promote their brands and only post about making a sale.
Use your reach to build relationships by creating content that solicits emotions, provides benefits, offers promotions or discounts, and educates, so your customers value you more than just a place where they get products or services.
Customers are Watching Their Wallets
Many businesses had to file for bankruptcy during this pandemic. Consumers are watching their wallets for how they spend, especially on non-essentials. This also caused many retrenchments and changes in shifts for daily workers. Tighter budgets made customers more conscious about purchasing.
If you aren’t essential, then your products and services will likely be deprioritized. And for that reason, you need to find ways as a business to make your business relevant to their current needs by innovating or repositioning your efforts.
Understand Consumer Paradigm Shift
Creating a target audience is one of the basics of marketing. All business owners I’ve talked to know this as well. So, what’s different now?
Your audience persona has also shifted. Customers are prioritizing health more than anything today. They will choose products and services that minimize risks. And they are also watching their wallets, and they are now prioritizing short-term costs and less on quality or branding.
As a business, you must take a deeper look at what they value most in a brand, the language they connect with the most so that your brand can build a human connection with them.
Consumers focus on home for work and play
Customers today are choosing to stay at home. Despite lockdowns easing and many businesses are opening to restart the economy, the home continues to be the safe space for many.
There was a rise in home cooking and baking, DIY activities, and home improvement during the onset of the pandemic, and they remain popular pastimes today. Innovating a response that makes you a household product or activity amidst these uncertain times is one of the opportunities that you can tap.
Adjusting to new customer habits brought by pandemic
The merits of rational logic and emotional appeals in sales and marketing have been a long debate. Rational logic enumerates product benefits, facts, or statistics, while emotive marketing appeals to consumer’s emotional states, needs, and aspirations. This global outbreak proves to challenge many industries, and the question of rational vs. emotional skew in marketing is being raised.
Emotional marketing can be challenging to do right if you aren’t native to the market you are trying to engage. Several factors can affect the decision-making process—geography, lifestyle, demographics, and so on. If it involves tugging on emotional heartstrings, those factors should be known to make it an effective initiative.
Rational marketing uses facts, data, and statistics. But when faced with choosing between you or your competitors, rational marketing plays a huge part.
That’s because your products not only need to feel good, they must be good.
Use emotional marketing to complement your rational marketing. Appeal to your customer’s desire for a better future and present a proven way toward that better future.
The Four R’s of a sales response
Crisis can be turned into an opportunity, and you can use these four key steps to lead your teams through these turbulent times, using both emotional and rational marketing at your disposal.
Respond
Engage marketing, sales, and service teams fast and stabilize teams, processes, and pipeline plans. Actions demonstrate commitments. This also includes supporting employees and understanding immediate steps that may affect short-term efforts.
- Support immediate needs of customers, such as products and pricing
- Shift to digital communications and online channels to conquer physical lockdowns
- Reprioritize sales, liquidity, and service agreements to cycle money back and retain customers
- Equip teams with remote tools to work from anywhere
Reflect
Assess what you’ve planned in the past and what’s in your pipeline to determine the necessary shifts and steps to take next. Review if there are plans that can be moved up to help you towards your immediate short-term goals.
- Revisit business plans and other initiatives
- Revisit customers and reprioritize needs by segment
- Scan competitive landscape for opportunities
- Track the pipeline plans and deal with risks
Reimagine
Take your discoveries to transition your current offerings and improve what you currently offer.
- Digitize your go-to-market strategies, bring rational and emotional to steer your wheel
- Update offerings and prices and make this information act as your rational marketing
- Track emerging trends and execute with agility, use it to your advantage when crafting relevant content
Rebound
Take it a step further to accelerate your efforts into rebounding your marketing campaigns. Use it as a springboard to pivot your business and stay ahead of the competition.
- Accelerate digital initiatives
- Scale e-commerce, digital sales, and inside sales
- Personalize customer engagement to build relationships
- Deploy agile teams and value-focused stints by balancing rationality and emotion
- Set up artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities to support efforts
- Create a virtual cross-functional team war room to execute rapid responses to identify, prioritize, pilot, and scale long-term initiatives
You want to use these 4 R’s and instill it in your marketing efforts as you use emotional marketing as part of your strategies. There’s no ‘better’ marketing between rational and emotional because both are needed to make your initiatives and efforts work, short-term and long-term.
How are your emotional marketing and rational marketing strategies today? Let’s discuss how you can rebound and use adverse times as an accelerator for your business.
About Jeev
A serial entrepreneur with a rich history of launching disruptive online businesses and taking them to the top, Jeev owns dozens of “go-to” reviews and rankings websites. Jeev has invested more than 20 years researching human behavior and how to leverage different sales methodologies to effectively influence decision-makers.To find out how Jeev can help you, visit jeevtrika.com.