Marketing with Emotions
I recently watched a video by Scott Galloway, Professor of Marketing at NYU-Stern, who made a humorous point: big brands know that the lower down the body you’re ads appeal to a prospective customer, the more of a premium price you can charge. Marketing based on price and service only is marketing to the customer’s brain. Marketing based on love, family, and relationships, is marketing to their heart. And marketing “below the belt…” Well, you know what he’s talking about.
His argument goes like this:
- Logical marketing -> low margins
- Emotional marketing -> high margins
In fact, an analysis of 1,400 case studies of successful advertising campaigns found that campaigns with purely emotional content performed about twice as well (31% vs. 16%) as those with only rational content.
If you’re a social/portrait photographer, this intuitively makes sense. You could talk all day about how your prints have superior color or sharpness, and never make a sale. More effective marketing appeals to the heart. It talks about capturing your client’s moments with family and friends at important events in their lives.
So what are the emotions you should appeal to? Marketing science has created a list: amusement, interest, surprise, happiness, delight, pleasure, joy, hope, love, affection, excitement.
As a photographer, how can you use this to your advantage?
- Browse through your online portfolios and take a moment to reflect on each image. Does it elicit an emotional response? For example, if you’re a wedding photographer, do your images show couples touching or smiling? If your portfolio is cluttered with artistic shots of the ceremony or close-ups of rings and shoes, delete them. They are perfect for a wedding album, but they don’t elicit the kind of emotions that make a bride pick up the phone and call.
- If you’re a portrait photographer, are you showing images of families in loving embraces? The shot where they are all hugging may not be the one they choose for a wall portrait, but it may be the best one for your portfolio.
- When you are editing a photo shoot and you see an image that elicits an emotion, that should be the one you post to Facebook or Pinterest. A common theme among nearly every viral photo is that it elicits a strong emotion. Make yours good ones.
- If you use your Facebook personal page to promote your studio, get creative. Images of a great steak dinner or vacation snaps may get a few “likes” from friends, but they aren’t helping you to build your business.
- If you shoot children, you’re in luck. They always make great marketing images.








