UNDERSTANDING EMOTIONAL MOTIVATORS
While practical factors like price, quality, and features play a role, research shows customers primarily make purchase decisions based on subconscious emotional needs. Maybe it’s the desire to feel valued and appreciated. Perhaps it’s seeking a sense of belonging and connection. Or it could be the aspirational vision of the life a product or service represents. Whatever the specifics, these fundamental human motivators shape customer preferences far more than rational considerations alone. Brands that satisfy rational needs while ignoring emotional drivers are leaving valuable connections unmade. This is partly revenue and sales, but more importantly, it leaves your brand merely as a functional solution rather than being more deeply rooted in the consumer’s identity — brands that create deep emotional ties foster more loyalty and attachment.
CREATING QUICK WINS
So how can companies pinpoint the underlying motivators fueling their audiences? Analyzing customer feedback from surveys, reviews, support interactions, and social media can reveal rich emotional cues missed by purely quantitative data. As customers describe their experiences, watch for subtle clues about the deeper needs met or unmet.
Journey Mapping: Journey mapping considers how people think, and feel, and also illuminates the goals, frustrations, questions, and emotional highs and lows they face on their path to choosing a brand.
Customer Personas: Combining demographics, behaviors, and psychographics into robust customer personas surfaces common motivational threads within segments to guide motivationally resonant experience design.
INCORPORATING MOTIVATIONS INTO STRATEGIES
With core motivations identified, experience leaders can incorporate these drivers across strategies like messaging/positioning, channel optimization, and employee training. Does the company’s voice, tone and marketing content authentically resonate with key audiences’ emotional needs? Crafting narratives that harmonize with customer motivations builds deeper connections.
Channel Optimization: Organizations should also examine each channel and interaction through a motivational lens — are there opportunities to better serve core drivers through UX, journey flows, product/service design, or enabling frontline teams with the training to understand these “whys?”
COMBINING FUNCTIONAL WITH EMOTIONAL
Brands that combine functional benefits with emotional ones occupy a different space in the hearts and minds of their customers. Here are a few doing it well.
Lululemon: Caters to its customers’ vision of an aspirational wellness lifestyle beyond just activewear. In-store events, ambassador programs, and empowering content all serve this deeper motivation.
Trader Joe’s: Playful branding, “treasure hunt” product sourcing, and stellar company culture appeal to audiences’ desire for joy, discovery, and connection around food.
Airbnb: By positioning itself as a platform for “belonging anywhere,” Airbnb hones in on universal human needs for acceptance and community that localized guidebooks, host meetups, and “experiences” all tap into.
WAYS TO GET STARTED
To begin leveraging the power of emotional motivators in your customer experience strategy, consider these actionable tips:
1. Conduct In-Depth Customer Feedback Analysis
Use surveys, reviews, and social media to gather qualitative data that reveals emotional needs. Leveraging first-party data and consumer research are critical components as well.
2. Develop Detailed Customer Personas
Combine demographics, behaviors, and psychographics to understand and cater to common motivational threads.
3. Implement Journey Mapping
Identify emotional highs and lows across all touchpoints to find opportunities to meet core motivations..
4. Train Frontline Teams
Ensure your employees understand the deeper “whys” behind customer behavior to better serve their needs.
5. Align Messaging and Content
Make sure your brand’s voice and marketing materials resonate with the emotional needs of your audience.
MASTERING THE ‘WHAT’ AND THE ‘WHY’
Ultimately, delivering exceptional customer experiences requires mastering both the “what” and the “why.” While meeting basic needs is one thing, catering to core emotional motivators in addition to these needs is what breeds enduring customer loyalty and brand love. Is your organization set up to not just understand your audience’s functional requirements, but also their fundamental human drivers? Identifying and serving the deeper “whys” could be the missing key to experiences that delight on a profound level.
At Salient, we understand that delivering exceptional customer experiences is paramount to forging deep, lasting connections with your audiences. Whether reimagining your digital experiences, physical spaces, or the full customer journey, we’re here to help you unlock the insights needed to deliver the exceptional experiences modern consumers crave.
