Our emotions cause us to react to our environment and the people around us. Advertisers realized emotions can be used as an effective marketing strategy. When advertisements appeal to a customers’ emotions, this helps drive sales.

Emotions can be used in your PPC ad campaign. When you market to your customers’ emotions, they better understand your advertisements. This helps you gain sales, brand recognition, and devoted customers.

But there are common traits that can make or break emotional PPC ads. Here’s how to do emotional advertising the right way and if this advertising method is right for your brand.

Positive vs. Negative Emotions

Emotional ads are placed into two categories: positive and negative emotions. Positive ads convey an enthusiastic feeling in consumers while negative ads convey a problem and a possible solution. Here’s how to effectively utilize both.

Positive Ads

Positive ads highlight good qualities. Whether the qualities are the product, service, or the company itself, positive ads convey feelings of enthusiasm and satisfaction.

Brand managers and advertisers use this method to highlight buying points to encourage consumers to use the product.

The goal of positive ads is to make the brand or product look amazing. This advertising sets brands ahead of their competition by proving their worth.

Effective positive advertising also makes consumers feel enthusiastic about the brand, encouraging their sales and devotion.

Restaurants use this advertising. They display tantalizing pictures of their food and encourage consumers to eat at their restaurant.

They’re using their delicious food to put themselves ahead of their competition. Since people love eating, they feel positive emotions when they see the amazing food advertised.

Common Types of Positive Emotions

When using positive ads, it’s helpful to understand positive emotions and how they can be used in advertising.

Happiness

This is the most common positive emotion. Everyone strives to be happy. Happiness is intoxicating and makes people feel they’re on Cloud 9. Happiness connects people and helps people interact with the world around them.

Use happiness in your positive ads.

If you’re using stock models or actors, make sure they’re smiling and laughing in your advertisements. Use words that convey happiness, such as “amazing” and “fun.” Use messages that link happiness to your product or service.

Compassion

Compassion is the feeling of selflessness. After you help someone or something, you feel good about yourself. Advertisers use compassion to help the consumer make a decision for the better.

Charities often use compassion, stating a donation will help those in need. Other companies use compassion as a way to prove you’re doing good for others, such as buying healthy food for your children or purchasing organic food for your pets.

Negative Ads

Don’t let the name fool you — negative advertising doesn’t make the consumer feel negative. Rather, it conveys a problem and provides a solution.

The ad usually states a common problem that consumers face. This could be a bad situation or even a negative emotion.

The goal of this advertising is to offer a solution to a problem. They use negative emotions or a bad situation to provoke negative emotions, but offer a solution so consumers can use their services.

For example, many lawyers use this type of advertising.

You probably see ads such as: “Did you get injured in a car accident? Call us for legal support.” This ad states a common problem, such as a car accident. But then they offer a solution, which is legal support.

Many businesses also use negative ads to place themselves over their competition, but this ad strategy is risky.

Common Types of Negative Emotions

Even though you don’t want consumers to feel bad, tapping into common negative emotions helps enhance the problematic message. These emotions include:

Sadness

Everyone feels sadness and depression. Some feel it occasionally while others are burdened with constant depression.

Advertisers use sadness to provide a solution. This could mean ending your depression, which is used in anti-depressant ads. Or feelings of sadness could even result in compassion, which is what charities commonly use.

Fear

At some point, people feel afraid. But horrifying images or details immediately puts people in fight-or-flight mode. Similar to how horror writers and filmmakers use fear, advertisers can introduce fear but then introduce a solution.

How do advertisers show fear? They use real-world situations and then offer a solution, which is their product or service. Examples include debt relief, protection from getting sued, or ways to prevent catastrophic events.

Emotional Analysis

When using emotional advertising, you should know which advertising method works best for you. Some brands benefit more from positive ads and others benefit more from negative ads. Many use a combination of both.

This is why emotional analysis is key. You need to ensure your demographic will react to your advertising.

For example, certain ads bore consumers or even annoy them. But the right ads will influence your sales. If you use advertisements that don’t create leads, your campaign will fail.

How do you know which type of ads will work? This may take some risk. You can always try both and see which method works for your brand.

How to Measure Advertising Success

The easiest way to measure advertising success is to monitor your sales after you release your ad. But this isn’t always successful. Here are other ways to measure ad success.

  • Look at your demographics — certain emotions affect people of different genders, races, ages, and geographic locations.
  • Surveys and interviews
  • Face-to-face and client-facing advertising
  • Monitoring social media comments, likes, shares, and messages
  • Customer concerns, suggestions, and reviews

Gaining feedback on specific ad campaigns isn’t always easy. But when you study your clientele and monitor sales, you’ll understand which emotional advertising campaign works.

Time to Use Emotional PPC Ads

Are your PPC ads failing? If so, your consumers probably don’t feel an emotional connection to your brand. If you think this is the case, emotional PPC ads will help improve a connection between you and your customers.

Use positive and negative emotions to convey different messages and tap into different feelings.

Are you ready to seek out professional PPC services? Take a look at our white label PPC management solutions today.

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