By engaging your audiences on an emotional level, you position yourself to shape their behavior. See how this tried-and-true offline strategy translates to the online world.
Demographic and behavioral targeting can be effective internet marketing strategies, but let's face it: Attempts to reach a particular audience based purely on algorithms can only take us so far. Brand advertising, on the other hand, is about appealing to emotions, and emotion is a key lever in persuasion. So if advertisers want to change attitudes and influence behavior, they must find environments where they can engage consumers on an emotional level.
Finding environments of passion
When's the last time you tried to connect with a 10-year-old? You may be interested in discovering what's going on at school, who his friends are or simply how he's feeling about himself. But a 10-year-old is not likely to open up at the dinner table, on the drive to soccer practice or even at bedtime. In order to begin a dialogue, that 10-year-old must first feel an emotional connection with you. If not, you'll be left saying, "I try to communicate, but the kid is so guarded and won't share."
Essentially, you've just attempted demographic and behavioral targeting. You chose the right audience and you had the person's attention, but you just couldn't break through on an emotional level and make that connection. The same is true for connecting with adults, and every day, brands are faced with that same challenge online: reaching consumers on an emotional level. In fact, brands have it tougher. They're not even in the same room with their intended audiences, but rather, trying to reach them via an impersonal computer screen.
Next time you try to connect with that 10-year-old, visit his room and pick up the Nintendo DS. Ask him about his highest level of Pokemon. You'll see a head pop up, eyebrows raise and light shine from his eyes. You've just found a passion point! Words will flow, and you'll experience genuine excitement as he shares the intricacies of the evolution of Chimchar to Monferno to Infernape. And now that you've connected on an emotional level, odds are you'll soon be able to engage with him on a variety of deeper topics.
Congratulations, you've just demonstrated the power of passion-point advertising.
By engaging around a topic that reached your audience (in this case, a 10-year-old) on an emotional level, you were able to make the initial connection. This enables you to achieve your real goal of influencing or changing attitudes, which in turn, affects choices and behaviors. It's a goal not dissimilar to that of brand advertisers: You need to change attitudes with emotional appeals in order to shape behavior.
Connecting around passion
If only advertisers had their own Pokemon Pokedex where they could find environments in which to engage consumers on an emotional level. The analogy does, however, provide clues as to where to find these environments -- namely, sites where consumers are engaging with their passions.
Pets (a personal favorite), gardening, tech gadgets, gaming, sports and green living are just the tip of the iceberg. The web offers innumerable special-interest niches where brands can engage relevantly and genuinely with consumers as they interact with their passions.
Take gardening. It's obvious that an endemic advertiser (that is, advertisers with products directly related to gardening) would be able to engage a consumer on a gardening site. What's not so obvious is how a non-endemic advertiser might do it. But if going from a conversation about Pokemon to one about self-confidence is achievable, then why can't an advertiser bridge the connection from gardening to retirement planning?
In the offline world, this is common practice. Financial firms, despite having little to do with sports, advertise at football stadiums because they know they are reaching passionate, attentive audiences. All the brands need to do to engage them is associate their brands with the game highlights.
Online, however, brands have been much slower to embrace non-endemic passion-point advertising -- and have therefore missed a valuable opportunity. The suspected reason? Current advertising technologies focus on the automation of behavioral and demographic targeting, and not enough scalable special-interest niches have been developed outside of the initial Web 1.0 portals. So while the offline world has many examples of successful special-interest niche publications -- like Car and Driver, Golf Monthly, and Better Homes and Gardens -- the online world is just now realizing that the web offers a multitude of these scalable special-interest verticals, especially when one considers all the mid- and long-tail sites.
As an advertiser or an agency, it's imperative to follow the development of online special-interest niches, or vertical media networks, in order to fully serve your brand or client. These niches, after all, provide the opportunity to change behavior through emotional connections.
Trevor Wright is CEO of DogTime Media.