In my daily activities and talking to people around me, I came across the concept of emotional intelligence. I had never really thought about it and how it is actually a great skill for marketers. This post is all about emotional intelligence in marketing and why and how to take it into consideration.

First of all, some definitions

According to the Oxford Dictionary, emotional intelligence is “The capacity to be aware of, control, and express one’s emotions, and to handle interpersonal relationships judiciously and empathetically.” It has 3 important components, the awareness, the management and the ability to apply emotions in an optimal way when interacting with others. The last part is especially interesting when it comes to marketing because it helps to create a message that really applies to one’s audience and speaks to their hearts.

But what is emotional intelligence concretely? What are some of its specific skills?

Curiosity: about the world but also about other people, especially if strangers. This is because of greater empathy and genuine care about others.

Self-awareness: emotional intelligent people are not only able to understand somebody else’s feelings, they are also great in recognizing their own and usually in a deeper way.

Self-motivation: internal goals, interests and values are what really drives emotional intelligent people, more than external factors such as promotions and rewards.

Empathy: understand other people’s needs and points of view is one of the key aspects of emotional intelligence.

How to develop your emotional intelligence in marketing

If you think you lack at emotional intelligence, there are good news: you can develop it! Here’s how you can do it in marketing.

Empathy with your customers

Put yourself into their shoes, think and understand their preferences and ways. A good starting point is to interpret the data from your marketing automation platforms; what do they say about your customer’s lives? To get even deeper, try to listen to your audience, there are plenty of ways for you to get messages from your audience, such as comments on social media. You can use tools such as Hootsuite to have an overview on hot topics and conversations people might have about your brand on social media.

Address your customers in a personalised way

After you got the insights on your target, it’s time to build a relationship with them. Use messages that apply to them, tell stories that inspire them and speak to their hearts. The better and more personalised conversations you have with your customers, the easier they will convert.

Add value

It’s not just about communicating in the right way, it’s also what you say to them. Adding value before even mentioning the sale will bring you closer to your goal. Because they will understand why they should buy it, what makes it different and special, what problems will it solve for them. You will have created a need in their mind. I think in this sense, it’s also great if you use some storytelling to clearly express your brand’s values. People will love to see that you are trying to make the world better. We will talk more extensively about storytelling in the next paragraph.

Learn from the past and be ambitious

Check the data from your past campaigns. Interpret them and assess what worked and what didn’t. This will help you reshaping your strategy accordingly. And then dare, use your creativity to find new ways to tell a message. Your ambition will help you making a greater impact!

Emotional intelligence and storytelling

As we mentioned before, one of the applications of emotional intelligence is storytelling. This technique is probably one of the most human ones as it has been in use for thousands of years to pass knowledge and memory. An effective storytelling can have very good effects on your audience and if you apply it to marketing, it will help increase your sales. From a scientific point of view this is because it can release some hormones that will make us feel more excited and focused on something. If we are able to induce those positive emotions about our products and brands, people will be keener to convert.

But what does this mean concretely? On this regard, I found a very inspiring TEDx Talk in Stockholm by coach and communication expert David JP Phillips. While talking about the positive effects of storytelling, Phillips makes an experiment with his audience inducing dopamine, oxytocin and endorphin by telling stories.

Dopamine: increases focus, motivation and memory. It is built with suspense, launching a cliff-hanger and through expectations on what will come next. In general, all storytelling creates it per definition as it is a sequence of events and the audience knows there is always something that will come next.

Oxytocin: fosters enhanced generosity, trust and bond, as it makes people feel more human and relaxed. It can be induced in storytelling by creating characters and situations the audience can relate to, making them empathetically connected to that story.

Endorphin: makes people feel more creative, relaxed and focused. It is induced by making people laugh.

To apply this to your marketing strategy, create the stories and consider which hormone they could induce in your audience. Then think at your customers and understand which type of story is better according to the situation or the message you want to convey. For instance, if you want to be perceived as a fun and creative brand, tell a story that makes them laugh, to produce endorphin. If, on the other hand, you want to show a very social responsible and committed brand, try to tell a very emotional story about a situation and character they can relate to. They will feel empathetic as a fair amount of oxytocin is released. Phillips calls this functional storytelling, and it means indexing the stories according to the specific hormone that will be induced and sharing them in the most appropriate occasions.

Do you have questions about emotional intelligence and storytelling? Send me an email at mail@annafranchi.com or leave a comment below!

In the previous article of the content is king series, we discussed about good about us page. Now that you have reformulated your website, you should focus on creating something new. Starting a blog is actually the most cost-effective way to promote yourself online. It will help you building an online audience of followers while avoiding the costs of paid channels.

This time, we will focus on why doing it, what to do and how you should do it.

Why do you need to start a blog?

If you are a startup or small business, a good marketing strategy is key to your success. However, many people wonder why would you even take the effort of writing. Starting a blog is very time consuming but does not generate direct revenue. This is true, thus there is so much more:

A blog is a place where you find your customers, provide them with valuable information while promoting your brand. Don’t sell your products, but tell something related to them. This really helps building more awareness: your customers and readers will have your company in their minds. It also adds value to their perception of your brand making them want to visit your website more often.

Blog articles are also great original content to share on your social media pages. You know you have to keep your followers engaged posting every day but sometimes you don’t know how to make it more variegated, so use your articles.

Your website will rank higher in the search results if you have a blog. This means that there will be more organic traffic to your website. Why? If you think about it, when you google something, it is very likely that you check the first 3-4 results of the first page, like 95% of people. The higher you are, the better chances you get to be seen. The search engines like fresh content, so they will reward you. However, your content needs to be CICO, as we discuss in the following point.

How to write a small business blog

When it comes to how to write, always remind to be CICO: Compelling, Informative, Correct and Organized.

It is important that you use the right keywords your customers might be looking for. The more you have on your website, the better search engines will rank you. So, when planning to write your posts, think at what your target might search for. There are some tools that will show you if the keyword you chose actually drives traffic. One of them is Key Word Planner. To use it you just need a Google AdWords account, which you probably already have. Key Word Planner will give you insights on how often the key words you choose appear in searches in your target location. The best part is that it’s free.

Remember not to write a text that is a sequence of keywords, but something interesting and factual. Also, don’t forget proper grammar and double checking typos. Write something you would also read through: the more time your visitors spend on your website, the better.

For what concerns timing, of course, the more often the better. In general, you should post at least once a month. Do it regularly and plan it in advance. If you know you don’t have much time for blogging, hire a content writer that will do the job for you. If that’s the case, it’s important that you have ongoing conversations and maybe interviews with this person, in order to make sure the posts are consistent with your style.

It’s always better that your blog is a section of your main website, as you don’t want to create confusion in your audience, but want people to relate to your brand. If you kept it on a different site, you would drive the organic traffic coming from your fresh content there. This would be highly counterproductive for your business goals.

What to write in your small business blog

First of all, remember that you are writing your small business blog for your customers, exactly like your website. You should already know your target, so design the posts for them and what appeals to them. The focus should always be on creating compelling and informative content. If you are in that specific business, you are an expert. Even if your experience doesn’t go back to the 90’s, you know the industry you are working in. You can do this!

A very easy way to start is by telling what, how and, most of all, why you do what you do. People will relate to it and this will keep them more engaged. If you share your knowledge and experience regularly, you will create a sort of expectation that will make people come and visit your blog for education purposes.

If you have been in business for a certain amount of time, you might always get the same questions. So why don’t you write about them? People are obviously interested in that specific topic. You might also decide to address a certain need you feel like your clientele has. In this case, your product is the solution, so make them realize it, but in a subtle way. Don’t just try to sell it at any cost.

Try to do more in-depth articles to position your blog as an educational, reliable and knowledgeable tool. You will also build trust and relationships with prospect clients, as well as fostering them with the current ones.

Involve your team in the posts. Even if there will always be one person coordinating the blog, having your entire family taking part to it will make your business more human as well as give fresh ideas on the content. Blogging will become a more fun team effort.

It is also good to check your competitors, to find inspiration but also to differentiate yourself. Like in your business strategy, find your unique selling proposition and use it for your posts. Looking at what the competition does is also great for tips about the design and the user experience you want for your blog.

Once you posted your article, share it on social media to tell the world. Also, always promote your posts among your newsletter subscribers. Email marketing is still the marketing tool with the highest ROI, more than SEO and display ads.

How do you write your blog posts? Leave a comment, would love to hear from you!

Tag: marketing

Emotional intelligence in marketing: become an empath and boost your business