When examining emotions and their effect on marketing, I am amazed by how few businesses, especially startups, take advantage of using them.

We are human and emotions constantly drive us toward action.

Frustrated because you’re in a job you hate? You may buy a book on how to get along better with your boss. Or you may read articles on when it’s time to move on to a new job. Or maybe you’ve decided it’s time for some real action and you hire a person to write your resume and coach you on interviewing skills.

And what drives you to make that change? You want a job that makes you feel fulfilled, satisfied, one that will compensate you fairly for your skills and talents. You have hope that there is such an employer out there who will offer you what you desire.

All of those decisions were fueled by emotion. Not logic.

Yet most of the copy I see is aiming toward the logical part of our brain.

“Why this makes sense to buy because it’s the fastest product in its class!”

Or, “You need to buy this because we received an engineering award that proves our portable fan has the longest-lasting motor!”

These claims are important. However, when a claim doesn’t trigger any dominant emotions, it fails to appeal to the buyer.

Emotions that appeal to the masses

As an example, let’s look at the infomercial for the Snuggie. This was one of the most popular products sold through an infomercial, raking in around $400M in sales.

Now if the product was advertised just using logic, it might have sounded like this. Buy a Snuggie because:

• it will keep your body at the optimum temperature of 98.9 degrees
• the fleece material will keep out cold drafts
• it covers your body while allowing for movement

However, depending solely on logic to sell a Snuggie would have fallen flat.

What was one of the first things the infomercial did?

It focused on a person wanting to get warm but yet didn’t want to turn up the heat in the house because that would cost them more money.

The emotions that were triggered at the very beginning were:

–  Anxiety that because you’re not warm enough, you have to raise the thermostat, which will mean (fear) yet another big bill that you really can’t afford to pay.
–  Irritation that a regular blanket just slips and slides, which is distracting plus, it interrupts a time to relax.
–  Frustration that a regular blanket made things inconvenient when trying to reach for a telephone on a side table.

Triggering these emotions obviously resonated with a lot of people as they watched the infomercial and probably said, “That is so true! My couch blanket just doesn’t do the trick. Every time I move it falls off!”

Before I watched the Snuggie infomercial, YouTube played an ad that appealed to me. It was for an online service that offers to analyze the performance of your website by using heat maps, which track how visitors respond to your site.

It used the dominant emotions of frustration, fear, and greed. It successfully triggered those emotions and then showed how their service would make things better.

Use emotions that push and pull

Remember that when you include emotions in your copy, you want to use one emotion that is pushing your potential buyer away from whatever is causing her pain but also use another emotion that will push her toward pleasure. If someone is frustrated, your product will bring them peace and tranquility. If your buyer is fearful, your product will bring them security. If your buyer is tired, your product will give them more energy.

I’ve talked before about knowing your prospect. This is why it’s so important to know them inside and out – their fears, hopes, and dreams. Once you are armed with that kind of psychological information, then you’ll be able to create copy that will speak to each one of those needs and position your product or service as the answer.

Until a prospect gets to that place where they say, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore!” You won’t get them to budge on buying your solution.

You have to remind them of why they’re so mad and then you can open the door to a better tomorrow.