The answer is a bit complicated because Millennials want to form an emotional connection with brands, which means that traditional advertising is a bad idea for businesses targeting this generation. To create that emotional connection, a brand needs to understand its target audience’s needs and issues, therefore, some degree of personalization is also required. As you can see, Nike is using a story of a great individual to evoke that much-needed emotion in the target audience consisting of people following the NBA. The Instagram post below was created by a well-known clothing brand H&M and posted on their official page. They used a real post by one of the customers – @michaelaforni – to make a user-generated post featuring a customer. If you’d like your own brand’s online marketing to evoke this response by using emotional marketing and personalization, check out the following tips: 1. Share user-generated content (UGC) to enhance personalization Often referred to as “customer-generated content,” this type of content is one of the best for generating an emotional response because it’s created by customers who don’t get paid for it. In fact, Social Media today cited the findings of the 2018 User Generated Content (UGC) Report claiming that 75 percent of consumers – think that UGC makes content “more authentic.” And we know it very well that only authentic content can be considered as relevant and generate an emotional response from the target audience. Use storytelling to make it easy for your customers to relate to your content Remember that Nike story I described above? To boost engagement with your social media posts through stories, you have to learn how to create that much-needed emotional appeal and make people feel excitement, nostalgia, happiness, romance, love, and other emotions (keep it positive, of course).
Image Source: Pexels
Each of these young people is different; they wear different clothes, have different personalities and values, and pursue different goals in life. Everything about them is unique because every person has a distinct worldview and different interests.
Does this matter to you as a business owner?
The answer is: absolutely.
Let me ask you another question about this beautiful picture.
Do you think these young people like being told what to buy?
While we certainly can’t ask them about this, chances are that no one of these four individuals lets businesses dictate their preferences and interests in clothing, electronics, and other products and services.
Why am I so sure about this? Well, it’s clear that the pictured individuals are most likely Millennials (ages 23 to 38 in 2019), the generation who is known for being deeply suspicious of corporate powers and lacking trust in brands.
But does that mean that Millennials – and many other people, for that matter – will never trust a business that makes an attempt to market a product or service to them?
The answer is a bit complicated because Millennials want to form an emotional connection with brands, which means that traditional advertising is a bad idea for businesses targeting this generation.
There’s a specific reason why I told you that each of the individuals in the image has different personalities etc. To create that emotional connection, a brand needs to understand its target audience’s needs and issues, therefore, some degree of personalization is also required.
In this article, I’m going to share four tips that you can use to evoke genuine emotion and reach out to your target audience, Millennials or other generations, with personalization and emotional marketing.
A bit about emotional marketing
Gone are the days when brands could advertise their products and services in any way they wanted. Customers are so sick and tired of hard-sell advertising, they won’t even bother considering buying from a business that chooses to use it.
Why?
Well, the answer is simple: traditional advertising is NOT focused on the customer.
“Traditional advertising is detached from their real needs, so it cannot evoke the emotional response that creates the intention to buy,” explains Anthony McGregor, a social media specialist from PickWriters.
Emotional marketing places a special emphasis on that response and prioritizes personalization to target customers, therefore, it has a much bigger chance to convince people to try your brand.
Let’s consider an example of emotional marketing.
The video below was created by Nike in collaboration with Kyrie Irving, one of the point guards currently playing in the NBA.
Here’s the description of the video, as given by Nike on the official webpage of the campaign:
Kyrie Irving’s mother died when he was nine years old, leaving his father, Drederick, to raise Kyrie and his sister alone. Her passing spurred Kyrie’s father to assume the full responsibilities of parenthood and sacrifice his dream of one day playing in the NBA – and then to pass that dream and opportunity along to Kyrie.
And here’s how they made that into a beautiful Instagram post.
As you can see, Nike is using a story of a great individual to evoke that much-needed emotion in the target audience consisting of people following the…
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