Emotion And Inbound Marketing
Writing is not all fact and figures. Inbound marketing, in particular, should have an emotional component. Now while your work should always have sound facts behind it remember that marketing is about reaching people and informing them. Customers seek out businesses because of a need or problem they are looking to solve. Sometimes this problem can be very simplistic for example simple boredom and a need for entertainment; while other times it can be far more important such as needing a new software program to manage a multinational supply chain. No matter what need the customer has relating to them on an emotional level is important. This is because it shows understanding of an issue and puts forth the idea that you (or your company) are the ones who can solve it.
About OCEAN
OCEAN is an acronym standing for openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. It is also referred to as The Big Five personality traits. It is a broad overview of human emotional reaction, the human psyche, and how people emotionally relate to the world around them. In general, you can apply OCEAN to written works by the emotional reaction it inspires in the reader. These emotions are commonly defined as joy, sadness, disgust, anger, and fear.
Now a work be it written, drawn, or acted can inspire any emotion, however, for marketing, you should stick to more positive emotions. The problem your goods and services are seeking to solve should not be overly focused on and instead should be framed as something to overcome and that with your help will no longer be an issue. Anger and sadness can be touched on but they shouldn’t overpower the work. The overriding ‘feel’ of your inbound marketing material should be positive, supportive, joyful, and solution focused.
How AI Can Help Make Works Resonate Emotionally With Your Readers
One way artificial intelligence can assist in proper emotional resonance is checking a work to see what emotions your sentence structure and word choices are evoking. Consider these two sentences in reference to a competition or game you participated in.
- Sentence 1: “We won the game that was great!”
- Sentence 2: “We won the game we totally destroyed them!”
Both sentences carry roughly the same meaning winning a game but the word choices convey different emotions. Sentence one is joy at winning while the second is more disdainful of your defeated opponents. AI software can detect your word choice and sentence structure using the OCEAN behavioral overview and tell you what underlying emotions your words contain. This assures that your writing does not have any unintended undertones and that it doesn’t produce a different reaction than the desired result. (Try for yourself by using WATSON finds)
Final Thoughts
Emotional content is an important part of inbound marketing as it builds the connection between your company and its desired customers. Using AI to review the emotional content of your work allows you to review how it affects the reader and to adjust it to make sure the proper emotional intent of the work is put across. There has been more than one occasion where a marketing firm has put out material that did not have the intended response. These mistakes are often caused by human error and not intended malice, however, the resulting damage to a company’s reputation is still the same. Use of AI software prevents such issues from occurring. (Check out WATSON finds.)