Attract customers by their senses.
It can get to the point in every company when you believe that you’ve exhausted every possible opportunity to market your wares.
And then along comes yet another fresh approach that puts a whole new angle on how you’re communicating with your future clients.
The advantage with Sensory Marketing is that it is an idea, which can be used to extend or improve marketing campaigns that you may already be using.
The concept
Stimulating the senses stirs interest, emotion, and draws attention towards your products and your brand.
Sensory Marketing is simply a strategy where you target your customers’ senses.
VISION – HEARING – SMELL – TASTE – TOUCH
Studies show that each sense brings an emotional response. And it is these responses that are strategically used in marketing.
More and more companies use these simple techniques to reinforce the links that unite them with their customers and at the same time increase their company’s turnover.
Remember that your survival depends on your clientele, your notoriety, your relationship with the client and the values that are attributed to you.
You could, if you like, consider sensory marketing as Inbound, in that stimulating the senses draws clients to you and your offer if the sense in question corresponds with something that pleases their senses.
Examples of sensory marketing
The tools to tempt the senses of your future clients are almost limitless, and leave a lot of room for creativity in your communication actions.
Every type of commerce – no matter how dull – can improve how their customers react by appealing to their senses.
VISION
- Does the visual environment correspond with the image you wish to portray, or the image that your customers would like to have of you?
- Does your publicity visually appeal to your target market?
- Is your image consistent (trustworthy) across all media?
HEARING
Does the audible environment correspond with client expectations?
For example:
- Gourmet restaurants often have no music at all, whereas a snack bar aimed at a young market might have music too loud to talk over.
- For services that welcome visitors, is there a confidentiality space? Can other visitors, or people in adjacent spaces overhear your consultation?
- Sometimes a little music lightens the atmosphere
SMELL
There’s nothing like a bad smell to raise questions about hygiene, so a minimum for a food based store is no smell whatsoever. However, whether it’s bakeries or Indian restaurants, clients expect to be ‘entranced’ well before they enter.
There are numerous room perfumes that will evoke different emotions, from hippy boutique patchouli to ‘ocean spray’ detergents used for lavatories.
Personal hygiene also deserves a checkup, no matter whether it’s in open spaces, meeting rooms or house visits. Everyone notices a smelly employee.
Everyone also notices when too much perfume is used too!
TASTE
Almost exclusively related to comestible products. Who has never succumbed to free tastings of cheese, fruit, chocolate on market stalls? It’s an offer so simple and yet so effective to make a sale.
TOUCH
Do you get the same feeling when you flick through the rough recycled pages of an organic vegetable store booklet as when you finger through a squeaky glossy brochure for a luxury sports car? No, you see even our fingers can read company values.
Sticky tables and floors in a restaurant are never a good sign.
Think about the texture of your products, run your hands over them, what emotions do they evoke?
A sensory marketing mix
Some commercial activities lend themselves to pleasing several senses; take a cosmetic store for example. First of all, you will be charmed by the intoxicating smell of the store’s products, point-of-sale merchandising uses beautiful colours to attract your attention, on-site demonstrations with professionals that allow you to touch and test the product, and all with music in the background to make the experience even more pleasant and memorable.
So do not hesitate to improve the relationship offered to your customers through Sensory Marketing, they will not only be more grateful, but a more pleasant experience will bring them back to your store.
Branding Consultant at Pont Bleu Communication
Daren Birchall’s career spans more than 30 years. He is a graphic designer, writer, analyst and communications strategist, marketing consultant, media buyer, production manager, and for quite some time was an advertising agent. He loves photography but his glasses bother him.
