If you are not a professional copy writer or creator, writing ads and creating content that your audience finds engaging is hard. Trying to get people to click on a link, hit the ‘Like” button, leave a comment, or take any action, including getting them to simply pause to read your message, is something that we all strive for, but few have mastered.
To solve this riddle, think about the ads, articles, and social media posts that you stop to read or take action on. In fact, maybe pause reading this, and scroll through your feed for a moment. What captures your attention?
In most cases, I bet the posts that captured your attention, be it photos or text, elicited some type of emotion. This could have been curiosity, relief, excitement, envy, anger, nostalgia, or anything that bubbled to the surface and caused you to pause and take note. Emotion, more than anything else, is what compels people to take the next step.
So how do we add emotion to our marketing? One way is to tell a story through text or through an image (or series of images), or portray a particular lifestyle that people may aspire to live or be running away from. Another way is to tackle problems that your audience has and address these head-on with solutions or to provide directions where to find the solution. Another idea still is simply to avoid cold pictures of “For Sale” signs or “I Just Sold Another Home” and to get candid pictures of your clients enjoying their new home with a story of their journey and the role you played in it (with their permission of course).
Remember that a big part of your branding is going to be what people ‘feel’ when they think of you or your brand. For this reason, it is ever more important to convey emotion in your posts and make your audience feel something if you want them to engage.
Get creative and have fun coming up with new ideas to appeal to your client’s and audience’s emotions to improve your brand and grow your business.