BRANDING   |   POSTED ON 21.07.2015

We all know that the two main emotions that sell are pleasure and pain but which one works best? It turns out that consumers are far more likely to take steps to move away from pain, than they are to move towards pleasure. But how does that translate into a selling and brand strategy?

1. Discontent

Creating a feeling of discontent also creates a desire and a need to want something better. The emotion of discontent involves the feelings of fear, frustration, guilt, regret, resentment and envy. The idea of this part of the strategy is to make your audience feel uncomfortable with the current state of affairs and their situation. When using this tactic you need to be careful and be sensitive; have a plan in place to move them from discontent or being uncomfortable to a place of comfort as soon as possible. You certainly don’t want your audience left with uncomfortable feelings that they will continue to associate with your brand, products and services.

2. Hope

Where discontent works on the ‘worst case scenario’ idea, hope works on the ‘what if scenario’. Providing hope will motivate your audience to act outside their comfort zone, take chances and try something new in order to eliminate that discontentment.

3. Excite

Once you’ve made them uncomfortable and wondering how things can be made better, and then instilled the hope of new possibilities, you should follow up with a bit of excitement. Getting your audience excited about the future will motivate them to take action to move forward. At this point many people will want to act immediately so it’s important that you have systems in place to ensure they can do so. Include CTAs (calls to action) to tell them the next step to take. Allow easy online ordering, booking or purchasing to make the most of the moment. If they can’t expend that excitement with your brand and your business then someone else will benefit from that emotional selling point.

Make your audience uncomfortable, provide them the hope that the situation can change, create excitement about the future and sell.

Contact your local brand agency Liquid Creativity today and get a strategy in place that works on the top three selling emotions.