Emotional Benefit: Buzzword Of 2015?

"Emotional Benefits" isn’t just another hyped up marketing term. They don’t only underpin the core reason that anyone buys anything, they are actually responsible for the reasons that anyone actually DOES anything.

You’ve probably heard the saying, “people make decisions based on emotion and justify with logic.” The importance of Emotional Benefits explains why that happens.

Firstly, let’s have a look at the differences between emotions and emotional benefits.

Emotions can be described as the neurochemical response to external stimuli. The rush of endorphins you get when you’re happy is the emotion. While we ultimately do things for that emotional rush, it’s impractical from a marketing perspective to say that’s what you should aim to do with your campaigns.

Taking one step back, the Emotional Benefit articulates the reason why behind we feel good. Our mission as marketers is to say it as closely as possible to the same way that our prospects word it. This shows that we understand them, empathise with them and allows them to trust us.

So How Do You Actually Find Out What The Emotional Benefit Is?

Isn’t that the $1,000,000 question?

It’s not only difficult for us marketers to find out what it is, directly asking consumers doesn’t necessarily work. Firstly, it’s a strange question; they won’t understand what it means because it’s out of context. Secondly, it’s a slippery concept and hard to pin down, since it’s so touchy feely.

This isn’t to say that it’s impossible. It just requires guided focus groups and a lot of time and data. That’s what the Livingstons did to create these findings in the first place.

Of course, this doesn’t mean we can’t try. We wouldn’t be very good marketers if we had to a deep dive into the market each time we wanted to learn more about them, would we?

Looking at ads that already work well, combined with a basic understand of the market, products and people can allow us to derive the Emotional Benefit to put into an AdWords ad.

Enough, Johnson! How do you ACTUALLY do it?

OK reader. Without further ado, let me walk through it. It’s quite simple, really. When you buy something, there’s an actual, physical feature. The emotional benefit stems from it. At a superficial level, you can do it right now:

• New Nike running shoes – EB could be feeling alive, full of energy, fiery.
• Banana – EB could be feeling responsible (not choosing donut), vitality, feeling healthy.
• Hot air balloon ride for partner – EB could be feeling like you’re a good spouse, being a great provider, sense of intimacy, closeness, etc.

See, it’s not difficult at all. It’s actually common sense. The hard part is narrowing it down so that the essence is captured in as few words as possible. Not only that, the few words must encapsulate one of the emotional benefits to really connect with the searcher at their level.

The more thorough you can be, the closer you can get to the true emotional benefit. So here are the steps:

1. Start with the feature: “What’s the benefit of FEATURE?”
2. Then ask, “And what’s the benefit of that?”
3. Then ask, “And what’s the benefit of that?”
4. …
5. They answer, “It just makes me feel good!”

Once you hit the answer in step 5, you’re at the end. That’s the emotion. Rewind one step and that answer is the Emotional Benefit. Whatever they said in that answer, use as close as possible the exact same wording for your ads.
Let’s do another example. Let’s choose something, oh I don’t know… a Japanese language course you can study from your smart phone.

1. Start with the feature: “what’s the benefit of doing this Japanese language course on your smart phone?”
2. They answer: “The time I would otherwise spend playing Candy Crush on my phone is now going to something useful.”
3. You ask, “what’s the benefit of that?” They say, “I get more done in a day.”
4. You ask, “what’s the benefit of that?” They say, “I’m productive and not wasting my time”
5. You ask, “what’s the benefit of that?” They say, “It just makes me feel good.”

So we know the emotional benefit is being productive. How could we communicate this in the AdWords ad?

First, what would an average marketer who doesn’t understand emotional benefits write the AdWords ad? It could a little something like this…

Well, my hand is up. What’s wrong with this ad and why wouldn’t we be surprised if it totally bombs? 

Firstly, as a whole, it’s sort of “me too”. It doesn’t really stand out for any reason. This is bad when you’re a marketer. If prospects are able to compare you or, even worse, you totally blend into the background, it doesn’t give them much reason to click on your ad.

The “Free Trial” offer is so overdone, it makes well done steaks look medium rare. If you're trying to major in mediocrity you would pass with flying colours. 

Now, I'm not saying that it's totally crap. This might get a response. However, if you wanted to write an inspired ad that sets the right emotional undertone and turns complete strangers into people who trust you, you would look at the emotional benefit involved. 
So this is what I would do:

1. Look at the FEATURE: 4-minute, interactive Japanese lessons from your iPhone.
2. Look at the RATIONAL BENEFIT: I can study this anywhere, as long as I have my iPhone.
3. Look at the EMOTIONAL BENEFIT: I'm productive. I'm not wasting my time.

The challenge now is to combine all three elements into an elegant ad that captures the attention of browsers and compels them to click.

I'd like you to have a go. This is one that I prepared earlier...

Here are my comments about my ad:

1. TITLE: shows the feature. Deliberately chose a "non-traditional" number to make it stand out.

2. 1st BODY: directly challenge the browser. Are you a time waster? Are you like all of those other low-lifes playing Candy Crush on the train? Viewer would like to think they're not. They want to think they're productive.

3. 2nd BODY: "get ahead" reinforces productivity emotional benefit. Also adds sense of elitism; people who want to get ahead think they're smarter than the average bear. App name is also in there. Trade off is "get ahead" is a weaker Call To Action than "download" or "install", so worth doing split test here.

4. URL: Snuck in offer into the URL. Experimental. Might seem tacky. Might work.

You'll notice that I didn't mention the benefit of being able to study everywhere in this ad. That's because that benefit is obvious. Lesson length is more of a USP, which is why I focused on that.

Who knows if this ad will work? AdWords is all about experimentation. It's pretty bloody fun too.

How would you write this ad?

This post originally appeared on JohnsonKee.com