How to appeal to your customer's emotional need
Image credit: EA Games
When it comes to content marketing, knowing your audience is key to crafting engaging content. Without first defining your target audience, you’re just messing around blindly with no actual plan of action, like playing Battleship purely by systematically going down the rows. If you've never played Battleship, trust me, it's a lot easier when you know whether your opponent is likely to hide their ships along the edges or all clustered in the middle.
Age and location are not enough data
I remember when I was trying to identify target demographics for a wellness resort I was marketing, and I asked some people what their guests were like and who we should be marketing to. Their answer was “travelers of a certain age bracket, from countries X, Y, and Z.” Obviously, that’s not really a deep enough answer to work off, because you’ve just listed 30 percent of the world’s population.
But why do you need a deeper understanding of your customers? Maybe because I read a lot of Syd Field books when I was writing screenplays, but I think everyone has a dramatic need of some kind. Your customers are no different - give them a solution to their needs, and you will have their attention. Otherwise, your marketing messages are just spam to them.
Everyone has a dramatic need of some kind.
We spoke at length about the wellness resort, its identity and frequent clientele, and we figured out that the people most attracted to it are those who have some kind of issues with their lives and are here in search of emotional and spiritual change. That’s something we can work with! Given this resort's price range, guests are usually high-powered execs with the spending power but time-poor.
That already tells us that they’re stressed out a lot, maybe a bit depressed and disgruntled with their corporate lives. They need some escape from their repetitive routines, their usual environments of concrete and fluorescent lighting, and those emails and phone calls. I can imagine them running through an open field singing “I want adventure in the great wide somewhere!”
From this information, we can derive the following:
Our tone will need to be conversational and approachable, because they’re going to be sick of all the corporate emails they read every day.
The imagery we use needs to be as far away as possible from cubicles and stale air – We need beaches, blue skies and greenery.
We will have to address their depression somehow and offer a solution.
Addressing the user's need in a relevant manner
Points 1 and 2 are simple enough to address, but point 3 is a bit trickier. Depressed people don’t often admit to themselves that they’re depressed. If you write a post about depression, they’ll gloss over it because they think it’s not relevant to them.
So we dug a little deeper and identified the symptoms of depression. Someone might not be looking for psychiatric help, but they’ll be interested in fixing that tension headache that keeps plaguing them. They don’t think they need cheering up, but they sure wouldn’t mind getting rid of that stiffness in their neck and shoulder muscles. Use the symptoms to get to the root problem.
Identify their needs, give them a solution, and they’ll reward you with their attention.
Need more information about your audience? Go read their reviews of your products and services, as well as of similar ones. The key complaints/praises that consistently show up will tell you what matters the most to them.
Once you have this information, you’ll have a much better foundation for building your content strategy. To draw on another screenwriting tip: understand your characters well enough, and the dialogue will write itself.
Remember: every person is more than an age bracket, a gender, and a location. Speak to a person, not a crowd. The cliched phrases are numerous for a reason. \
Recap
Find out more about your customer, who they are and what they need
Work out how to appeal to their key emotional need - address symptoms rather than causes to show understanding
Read reviews to find out what matters to your customers
