Emotional Targeting: Does It Really Work?

Humans are intuitive beings, so all of us are guided by our feelings to some extend. As a marketer, learning how to connect with your audience’s emotions is a great skill because you can use it for much more than simply selling a product.

That said, learning how to create a meaningful bond is not simple or easy, so you have to put in the time and learn about the things that drive your audience.

Let’s talk about emotional targeting (if it works), and check out a few tips to help you implement this approach into your ads and affiliate campaign as a whole.

Defining Emotional Targeting

Emotional targeting is the practice of studying how your audience behaves, why they react in a certain way, and understanding how their emotional state influences their decisions. Marketers that leverage emotional targeting can design ads that encourage viewers to complete the desired action.

In other words, if you lean on your targets’ emotions, they are more likely to provide information, make a purchase, or otherwise complete an action that results in a conversion.

Not only this, generating an emotional response means that your campaign is memorable, so it’s more likely to attract attention and your brand image in the eyes of consumers.

Does Emotional Targeting Work?

The short, simple answer to this question is that yes, emotional targeting does work.

There are hundreds if not thousands of affiliates and companies competing for your audience’s attention. Emotional targeting allows you to go beyond standard copy-paste ads, stand out of the competition, and find creative elements that strike a chord with your potential customers.

Emotional targeting works because it uses the BEM approach. BEM, which stands for behaviors, emotions, and moments, is an approach that helps marketers focus on these three stages, which can be defined as:

Behavior: The point where consumers show interest or start behaving in a way that indicated they are interested in your product.

Emotions: This area gauges the overall mood consumers find themselves in. Today, many countries around the world are in lockdown due to the global healthcare crisis. Marketers can use this to their advantage and figure out what this means in regards to their product.

Moments: The moment can be considered as the trigger that sets off the entire conversion process. Are consumers in a new place or situation that may trigger the need for your product? If so, make sure your ads are there when consumers need them most.

How to Optimize for Emotions

There are many obvious and not-so-obvious elements that will impact the performance of your emotional campaign. To get the best results during optimization, remember to:

Make Your Campaign Customer-Centric

Your emotional campaign should focus on customers, not the product being promoted. Instead of talking about your brand, highlight how this product will improve your audience’s life experience and why having it is a no-brainer.

Show How It Works

Don’t show the product (unless it’s makeup, clothing, phones, etc.), show the results this product can provide.

When Testing, Focus on Large Variants First

It’s important to figure out which elements influence consumer decisions heavily and which features are secondary. The best way to do this is to conduct split testing. However, you should start off by testing large variants in your ads, like ideas, images, and color schemes. Once you have found a base combination that works well, you can start testing smaller elements within your ads.