Content marketing can be simply put as a promotion technique. Marketers will create and distribute valuable, relevant content to attract and engage a defined and outlined target audience. The primary objective of this technique is to drive profitable client action.

How important is content marketing to businesses?

Content marketing uses social media, blogs, videos and podcasts as a vehicle to attract prospects and essentially convert them into customers. According to the 2016 B2B final report, 86% of respondents said they use content marketing.

The science of evoking emotions in content marketing.

Powerful emotion evoking content plays a major role in how people engage with and share content. In order to begin, gain a thorough understanding of your target audience. What do they like to read? View? Or value? Establish the emotions that drive them to take action. Studies show people are more likely to purchase from companies they feel an emotional impact from. People have great emotional connections to brands like Chick-fila, Apple, and Air Jordan.

Reasons behind sharing

Sharing content helps market brands, define who they are to others, and provide entertainment.

There was a study that was carried out by The New York Times customer insight group to discover why people share. The study involved:

• A one-week sharing panel
• In-person interviews
• Quantitative survey of 2,500 online sharing individuals

The results of their findings concluded that ‘sharing is all about relationships.’ They discovered 5 main reasons people share content:

1. To bring valuable and entertaining content to others
2. To define ourselves to others
3. To grow and nourish our relationships
4. Self-fulfilment
5. To get the word out about causes or brands

See the full study here.

Cool, so what?

Essentially people, in a nutshell, are emotional creatures. The decision to make a purchase is often driven by emotion. Therefore, there isn’t a positive outlook for marketing content through a rational approach. It is better to look at how content can help drive the sales process rather than selling directly.

Real Examples

Check below to see some stellar examples of content marketing that provoked emotions from their target audiences.

1. Dove - Real Beauty Campaign

Content savvy marketers like Dove, understand how strong of an impact emotional content makes. In their Real Beauty campaign, Real Beauty Sketches takes a look at how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us. An FBI-trained forensic artist draws each woman, making them the subject of two portraits. One of the portraits represent her own description, and the other is a stranger’s observation. The emotions evoked are uncontrollable.

2. Pandora “Unique Collection”

Pandora has launched a new collection named the “Unique Collection.” In the video content, they stirred a lot of emotions with this experiment.

“As the children were guided towards the group of women, they used their senses and intuition to try to find the one they believed to be their mother. Anxiety, love and a bit of heartfelt tears filled the room as children from the age of 3-9 tried and succeeded in finding the one and only they could call mommy!”

This kind of content is the perfect concoction to create an emotional connection with mothers and their children—the target market.

3. Go Pro

The world’s famous action camera is highly favored on Instagram. With at least 10.2 million followers, Go Pro has illustrated content marketing at its finest. The fast pace videos and creative picture shots give people a thrill. It makes you ask yourself, “why haven’t I purchased one yet?” The visual content is attracting for the brand and speaks for itself. Check it out here:

4. P&G Thank You, Mom - Strong 

P&G’s Thank You, Mom Campaign evoked emotions out of many mothers worldwide. This campaign sheds light on the strength of mothers in every facet of their lives. It follows the Olympic Games journeys of four mothers and their children. This campaign serves as a thank you contribution to the athletes’ mothers that inspired them. Check out the full video below:

5. Budweiser- Someone Waits for You At Home, DON'T DRINK & DRIVE Campaign

Budweiser presents a campaign to prevent drinking and driving. The video illustrates a responsible owner that is coaxed by his friends into sleeping in, instead of driving drunk. The next day when he arrives home, his dog is relieved and thrilled for his homecoming. In just 60 seconds, this ad will cause you to clutch your pet dog and shed a tear. The emotional content provided is convincing enough to make people think about being more responsible while drinking –or their pet will never see them again and become sad. See the full footage for yourself here:

The owner is responsible. Instead of driving home, he apparently was coaxed by his buddies into sleeping it off. So he arrives home safe the next morning, to his dog's delight.

6. Coke’s “Share A Coke” Campaign

Coke’s Share a Coke campaign created many emotional connections with its audience because it was personalized. Personalization increases customer engagement. Coke even revolutionized emotional connections by asking people to “share” their product. On social media, thousands of people were sharing their personalized coke bottles.  Simply put, this was an effective viral campaign in a bottle.

7. Toys “R” Us- Christmas Tree Ad

A popular theme for the holiday ads will include children and the elderly. Businesses understand pairing young children with elderly people often evokes emotions in viewers. In this commercial ad, a young girl walks across the street and surprises an old man by decorating his front lawn for Christmas. The following morning, she walks outside and sees that the old man has returned the favor by putting toys and gifts under her tree. See the full video here:

8. Extra Gum – Origami

Extra Gum created a heartfelt ad that made viewers melt. It shows a father teaching his young daughter how to make origami cranes using gum wrappers. As she gets older, her father continues to give her these origami cranes. At the end of the footage, while the parents are packing the car to send their daughter off to college –the father accidentally drops an entire box full of his paper cranes. The ad closes with a heartwarming voice over saying: “Sometimes the little things last the longest.”

See full video ad here:

What You Can Learn from This

Emotions play a crucial element of content marketing. This is where the real long-term connection between a brand and its audience is driven. In other words, brands must trigger a positive emotional reaction in a consumer to attract them, leading to sales.

Here are some tips to remember how content marketing and using emotional content can be beneficial in the long run:

• It can provide resourceful material for a social media marketing campaign.
• It can encourage more email sign ups and be used as the basis for an email marketing campaign.
• It can enhance the value of your landing page and other web pages.
• It can help you build relationships with other online brands
• Attract new traffic
• Encourages trust in your brand
• Builds reputation as a brand

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