Sensory marketing: connecting with your customers beyond the senses
Gabriel Barile
The stimulation of the five senses has been the boom in marketing strategies recently used by business specialists and companies... and sensory marketing is here to stay.
Working with the consumer's emotions allows a connection between a brand and the customer's needs, that often evokes a story that usually involves a product capable of causing an emotional explosion.
Just that explosion of emotions is what you should take advantage of to build sensory marketing strategies that will make your company or business stay connected to the public's life story.
That connection is created based on a positive story that goes around in the customer's memory, that moves their feelings and that engages them with what is represented in that story.
It’s not a matter of using this marketing strategy indiscriminately, it’s important to know how to achieve the emotional commitment between the consumer and your brand so that he remembers it, values it and makes it part of his daily life.
If the brain is able to remember in an emotional way from sensory stimuli; that is, you remember 1% of what you touch, 2% of what you hear, 5% of what you see, 15% of what you taste and 35% of what you smell, then here is the key to everything.
What is sensory marketing?
Through the five senses, emotional experiences are created that connect the customer with a brand or product, which generates a need to purchase it every time it is remembered or evoked. This connection of emotions with a product, brand or service is what is known as sensory marketing.
The purpose of this commercial strategy is to turn the purchasing process into a pleasant adventure for the public and to ensure that the consumer's first contact with your brand or product is stored in his memory bank for a long time and is easily remembered every time it is necessary.
This can be achieved by strengthening branding with the good use of the five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell. Why, because the use of the senses makes the consumer associate pleasant sensations such as melodies, aromas, textures, among others to your brand, product, business or company.
The different sensations make sensory marketing cause a positive effect on your customers as they relate their personal aspects (such as the memories evoked), with your product.
How to stimulate the five senses through sensory marketing?
The main objective of sensory marketing is the stimulation of one or more senses of customers, so that they can connect with the product or service offered to them, since at the time they decide to make a purchase, they make that decision based on their subconscious, evoking the emotional connection they have created with a brand.
Below we will explain how each of the senses work through sensory marketing:
Scent marketing
Some big brands have adopted their own scent, which has helped them to position themselves comfortably on the market, since smell is the most powerful of the senses in terms of memory and emotions, so it’s very important to know how to stimulate this sense so that it becomes a good tool and not a nightmare.
We know that you are interested in expanding this topic and that’s why we inform you that there is an article in our blog, specially dedicated to olfactory marketing.
What aspects should you consider about scent marketing:
Do not mix scents if you want to create an olfactory image of your brand.
Keep the focus on what you want to convey with your scent.
Make the customer perceive exactly what you want them to remember about your company or business.
Tactile marketing
The main protagonist of this strategy is the texture of the products. In this strategy, the most important thing is the quality of the materials you use to make and present them.
In case you work with the textile sector, your brand must give the customer the feeling that there is nothing beyond your clothes; that what is being measured is the comfort of the product and that they should come back for more.
You can also use creativity to create unique packaging, either with an engraving or accent on bags and packaging; also try to combine different textures that are pleasing to the touch and sight, but at the same time are light and resistant.
Aspects to consider in tactile marketing:
The texture of the materials should be pleasant to the touch.
The presentation of the product must be a reference of distinction with respect to other brands.
Auditory marketing
Music, because of its power to arouse emotions, is a perfect tool that will help you persuade and stimulate the purchase intention of a potential customer; but it’s very important to know how to find the balance between the image of your brand and the values you transmit through it.
Important points to consider in auditory marketing:
Music is so influential in a customer's mood that it can lead him to buy a product almost unconsciously.
This marketing strategy should not be taken lightly as it will help you connect with your audience.
Music can also cause some customers to flee in terror if your brand's personality doesn't match the music you use.
Taste marketing
As with the sense of smell, this type of marketing tends to take advantage of the sense of taste since both are linked to emotions and the evocation of situations experienced.
The use of strategies that involve the association of flavors with the moment of buying a product, allows the purchase process to be fixed on the memory of your customers, regardless of whether the product is related or not to what you give them to taste, whether it’s a cup of coffee or a piece of candy.
It’s important to consider the following in taste marketing:
You must create unique flavors that stimulate the palate of your customers, if your brand is oriented towards the food sector.
In case you are not oriented to the food sector, if you want to please your customers, tasting something simple is more than enough (it can be coffee, candy or cookies).
If a good taste attracts the customer, an unpleasant taste can generate the opposite effect.
Visual marketing
In this the use of designs, colors, shapes and sizes is "the strategy", both for off and online commerce. You can easily apply it in merchandising, in the windows of physical sales sites and in the wrapping or packaging.
The main objective of visual marketing is to stimulate the fixation of your product brand in the memory of your customers for a long time.
What to consider in visual marketing:
Color is very important to persuade the customer at the moment of purchase.
The lighting of your store, in addition to the feeling of warmth also helps to better perceive the quality of the materials of the products.
Sensory marketing and customer loyalty
The desire to increase your sales often leads you to think only about the monetary value of your brand or product; however, a customer will remember his purchase experience if it has been satisfactory.
If the consumer receives good attention, cordiality, education and respect, he will pay whatever it takes and will remain faithful to your standards, that is why you should not neglect those details since they are the ones that make the difference between your product and products of others.
The brand of your company, business or product must have values that are emotionally associated with it. In a market where the consumer seeks to live rewarding shopping experiences, the use of sensory marketing strategies should be your support point.
Advantages of sensory marketing
The use of strategies that awaken the five senses of your customers can bring you the following benefits:
It connects you emotionally with the customer: stimulating the consumer's senses creates new ways to maintain two-way communication by sharing their personal experience, which makes it easier for them to connect with your brand, service or product.
It helps you personalize your brand: sensory marketing keeps your brand fresh in the customer's memory, as something innovative, recent and growing, which gives them the feeling that you are marketing exclusively to their needs.
It allows you to humanize your brand: it’s a marketing strategy that makes you look closer to the consumer who will value your closeness and will feel that you take their feelings into account.
It allows you to offer your customer a unique experience: the shopping experience is decisive for a customer to decide whether to repeat it or not. Depending on the emotion generated by the sensory marketing strategy you offer them, they will respond with loyalty to you and your product.
Sensory marketing and neuromarketing
Sensory marketing is supported by neuromarketing because it applies techniques in the field of marketing and advertising that are directly related to neuroscience, by analyzing the emotional levels of attention and memory that occur in consumers when faced with certain stimuli.
Neuromarketing is able to point out how a product or service can be improved and can also indicate what a consumer's purchasing decision process is like. Therefore, some aspects of neuromarketing are considered in sensory marketing when you want to create emotional connections in the consumer's brain.
Neuromarketing provides accurate information to improve resources, optimize marketing, increase sales and even perfect the products themselves; the reactions that consumers show in social networks allow the collection of such information.
Neuromarketing can then be considered as the technical support of sensory marketing thanks to the fact that the study of the consumer's psychophysiological responses allows conclusions to be drawn from the process of their purchase decision.
The merchandising that is done from sensory marketing seeks to stir the emotions of the public through the stimulation of their senses, to in turn connect them with a brand or special product.
The marketing of the senses has become the most used tool by advertising creatives who appeal to the consumer's subconscious as a sales strategy online or in physical stores, with the intention of connecting the customer's emotions with their purchasing needs.
Sensory marketing provokes a real experience that is generally positive, capable of leading the consumer to associate what they have experienced with a sensation, be it a smell, taste, touch, hearing or visual sensation, making their emotion loyal to the brand of the product or service obtained.
If the emotional connection is pleasant, sensory marketing will be successful; if not, your brand values will be stored in a memory bank of useless things and obviously nobody wants that to happen to you.
Therefore, our recommendation is that you perfect the use of sensory marketing very well, so that the awakening of the consumer's senses is automatic and at the same time pleasurable.
The consumer tends to believe that he is very reflexive when it comes to buying and that at the moment of deciding he does it in a very rational way; however, the vast majority of purchase decisions happen in his subconscious... which makes it easier to reach his emotions and drive his behavior towards consumption.
The evocative customer lives remembering experiences of their past and the emotions they lived before certain sensory stimuli. Focusing your marketing strategy on this type of consumer, you will always have guaranteed success.
If you are looking to connect with your customers based on the senses, we invite you to review the content of our masters or programs to perfect your marketing strategies ... We hope to connect with your needs.
Your opinion is highly valued for our growth!
Looking for something specific?
