Every day, thousands of brands battle for your attention.
Over 3 million businesses use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and every other social media platform out there to sell us products, services, ideas.
Our brains can’t process this much data…
… And so we filter it out.
The glossy ads become white noise. Just another thing to ignore.
If you run social media for one of those 3 million businesses,
If you’re fighting for people’s attention,
You can’t rely on the same old tactics anymore.
Product-focused images, blunt sale offers… these aren’t enough. Not if your ads are missing this key conversion trigger.
The same trigger used by the biggest brands in the world. Brands like Lego, Coca Cola and Nike.
These brands don’t get through to us by talking about themselves, their products, their services…
Instead, they talk about us.
They tap into our innermost emotions and then reflect them back to us in every ad. In every post.
In today’s workshop I show you some of my favorite examples of brands using social media to attract new clients by being hard to ignore. Then I break it all down into 4 actionable tips for leveraging emotion in your social media campaigns to boost conversions.
Here’s what you don’t want to miss:
- The surprising difference between how people buy and how we market to them,
- The impact changing their focus from features to emotions had on one of my clients,
- Examples of ads that tapped into the unbridled power of emotion-based marketing (and how you can use their lessons),
And more.
Watch the recording below:
Table of Contents
Transcript and slides
This is a lightly edited transcript to make it it easier to read- just incase you’d rather read through than watch!
And if you want to jump to specific sections, here’s your section guide:
- The curious ingredient you need to effectively optimize your social media campaigns
- How you think you buy things
- The emotional targeting methodology
- From features to emotions
- How the largest brands leverage emotions on social media
- The emotional context of ads
- How Duolingo makes you want to learn a language
- The four ways you can leverage emotion to boost social media conversion
- Wrapping things up
Today’s workshop is all about using emotion to increase your social media conversions.
I’m going to show you how you can use emotion, persuasion and psychology to optimize your social media campaigns and posts.
The curious ingredient you need to effectively optimize your social media campaigns
Here’s what we’ll cover today:
- Why emotion is actually the missing key,
- How to tap into customers’ emotions and understand their goals,
- Social media examples that attract and win customers,
- Four actionable tips for leveraging emotion in your social media campaigns to boost conversions.
I’m going to show you real life examples. We’re going to analyze them. I even have some video examples, which is pretty cool because I haven’t done that in a very long time.
The numbers you need to know about
First I thought I’d talk about the numbers.
So interestingly enough, according to Social Media Examiner – this is the report from 2018 – 3 million businesses use Facebook and social media to market themselves.
Facebook ads are used by 72% of marketers. Instagram is used by 31% and so it goes on.
That’s about 3 million businesses using social media to market themselves every day. And these brands… They’re texting us, they’re calling us, they’re emailing us, they’re targeting us in their social media posts.
They are everywhere and they’re overwhelming us with all of the content now and all their offers.
In fact, we’re so used to being targeted by brands today that our brain automatically just tries to block out all that noise and ignore those ads.
Our brain tries to the max to remove all those ads from your notice, and so you don’t see anything and kind of gives you that blind spot. (Not great for marketers.)
Millions of businesses base a huge part of their revenue stream on social media. So they must be getting through to us somehow, right? I mean some of them are doing a kickass job.
So how do some brands manage to drown all that noise and reach us? What separates the successful ones from the rest?
And this is exactly what I want to talk about today because this is what you’re going to be doing right after this training.
Why people buy from you
One of the things that I love to ask, and you may have seen me ask you guys this before, is why do you think people buy from you? Very important question to think about and consider with everything that you’re doing.
Most people seem to think that it’s to do with the features that they have, the shipping, the benefits, the different pricing that they have on their product or their service. Basically, a lot of things to do with the product or the service that they’re offering. Everything is about that service or product.
However, as I’ve mentioned countless times, I truly believe that if this was the reason that people buy things, if these were the reasons that made people purchase stuff or sign contracts or hire different contractors, then the biggest brands in the world would have landing pages like this:
Coca-Cola would talk about the fact that they’re the number one soft drink in the world. And they’d be talking about the fact that they have only just 140 calories and they’d show the image of the bottle and whatever.
So it would all be about the product. However, as we all know, this is not what Coca Cola does, right?
So why do so many ads and posts and landing pages and websites focus on this, on benefits, solutions, on pricing, on features. What makes us all just say, oh, this is the right approach to do it.
So here is my 2 cents on that.
How you think you buy things
We have somehow convinced ourselves from years and years of experience that this is how people buy it, right?
So when we need to decide between a contractor or a SaaS product and we go for this elaborate part of stage of thinking and rethinking and considering the pros and the cons. And then we reach this rational decision that makes complete sense. All to do with logic.
We think people buy this way.
That’s why everyone focuses on the features that they’re offering, the pricing, the product and stuff like that.
However, the most successful brands in the world, my students, and you guys know that this isn’t how people buy.
This is:
Every single thing that we buy in life has an emotional reason to it.
We’re going to cover this a lot more during our emotional targeting month.Later on this year we’re all dive into specific emotions and how to use them. (You can also watch this workshop.)
Unfortunately, we are all irrational and all our decisions are based on emotion.
Here’s how it works. We have some sort of issue that we’re facing or we’re trying to figure out if we should buy something or not or hire someone or not.
Our emotions kick in and we make a decision according to our emotions. Then logic kicks in and essentially we rationalize that decision.
It’s a very hard thing to people to accept. People hate admitting that they’re rational. No one believes that.
A case for emotion-based decision making
I always like to tell a story about myself, and you may have heard this before, but my biggest fear in life is flying.
I absolutely hate planes.
Now, if you know me, you know that I travel a ton. I’m speaking all over the world. I’m doing workshops at different companies. So I’m fighting a lot. And it really is a big thing for me. I have a very hard time doing that.
And even though this is my biggest fear in life, I still found myself doing this about eight years ago.
I jumped out of freaking plane.
Now I would love to say that I was doing this because I’ve always wanted to jump out of the plane. I’m an adrenaline junkie or I dunno, all sorts of weird, crazy reasons for people who want to jump out of the plane.
But I have to admit that that is far from true. In fact, the reason I jumped out of a freaking plane was because I wanted to impress a guy.
I kid you not. I wanted this guy that I met at the sky diving club to think that I was this cool adrenaline junkie person. I wanted him to be impressed by me. So I jumped out of a plane.
Funnily enough, this guy is now married to one of my friends. Nothing happened with that. But it really is an interesting concept because this is how people buy.
And I know this is an extreme example, but everything we buy is based on emotion. There’s always some underlying emotion, desired feeling, desired need that lies underneath all of our purchases.
Maybe we want to feel loved. Perhaps you want to feel part of the community. Maybe we want to feel more successful. Sometimes we just want higher self-esteem.
This is true for B2C and B2B. No matter what you’re selling, what people really care about isn’t the what. It’s the why.
What’s in it for them? What’s the value? How is this going to make them look? How’s it going to make them feel? Is this achieving their emotional goals?
Those are the questions we ask ourselves.
As I mentioned, most of us focus on the numbers, the graphs. When we think about our customers or our target audience, we think about numbers. We think about browsers, devices, geographical location. And that’s why when you look at social media posts, you see all sorts of things to do with the product. It’s pricing and many other things that have nothing to do with emotion.
Yet this is how marketers continue to sell…
Let me show you an example.
On the left, we have a company that talks about the fact that they have various colors available of this gorgeous dress and it’s 30% off. The specific focus here is on the price and the fact that the dress is gorgeous.
On the right hand side, we have the company talking about that it’s 14 days, absolutely three. So they’re talking about pricing and they talk about the fact that they’re the world number one landing page builder, absolutely free today.
Everything that you see in these ads in front of you is to do with the product itself, the service that they’re offering and how cool is.
It’s all about the features and pricing.
There’s nothing in here about emotion because – and this isn’t about shaming or saying that something that all these specific companies are wrong.
We all do this.
We forget that there are people behind the screens, people that need help from us.
Yet the most successful brands grab our attention. They convert us because they understand there are people behind the screens. They know our pain, our challenges, the outcomes we wish for.
They understand our emotions and they know how to reflect those back to us in their ads, campaigns and websites.
They’re using images and videos and text and copy and other elements in their ads or posts to essentially really influence our emotions. And these companies have really done their research.
They know what emotions influence their specific target audience, what makes them stop everything they’re doing and click on that ad.
Brands that know their audience well, understand that people buy products and services because of how they make them feel, not because of the rational benefit behind them.
They know that using emotion is the key to standing out in a crowded market and grabbing a prospect’s attention.
Everybody hurts
It’s important to remember that when someone’s on your website or when someone’s reading your ad or clicking on an ad, that’s because they have some sort of pain.
It’s our job to fix that pain.
That’s why I want to talk to you about how you can get started with the same things as the biggest brands.
You don’t need a huge amount of resources. You don’t have to have a huge budget. Anyone can use emotion to increase their conversions, especially on social media.
The emotional targeting methodology
All these issues that we face as marketers made me create the emotional targeting methodology.
If you haven’t heard of it yet – and I do speak about it a lot – it’s all about understanding people on a deeper level.
It’s about more than demographic features like gender, location, profession, income.
When I ask my students or my clients questions like Who is your target audience? or Who’s your customer? I get a list of all these behavioral elements of the devices and the browsers and their age and income and geographical location.
But this specific methodology is actually built to understand the people behind the screen.
We focus on the real challenges and the pains that prompt people to come to your website and the pains and challenges that they want to solve.
Let’s take a look at an example.
From features to emotions
This company essentially helps you create beautiful infographics and presentations for your company.
When you look at this page, you’ll actually notice that they’re making a lot of the mistakes that we’ve been speaking about today.
Their headline is “Easy to use infographic creator.” It’s about the platform.
They have six different bullet points, all of that, their features and the pricing and why this product is the best. Their main hero image is a “how to” video. Literally, a video that shows you how to drag and drop different things.
They hired Get Uplift to help them not only increase their signups. They wanted to increase people’s engagement with the product. They wanted people to create many more presentations, many more info graphics and really invest their time in this product.
But as I mentioned, there are many issues on this page. It’s focused on the product.
Nothing on this page is actually addressing anything to do with the customer. So we did our emotional targeting research and here are a few things that we realized when we were doing our research.
The people using this product are marketers and these marketers want to stand out.
Their emotional trigger was social image. They wanted to have their team, their managers and the people around them appreciate the work that they do. And they were searching for ways to highlight their hard work using a simple PowerPoint or keynote wasn’t enough for them. They wanted something that would make people remember that.
The other thing that we realized through our research was that people were really worried about the complexity of this kind of product. It was really important that we would highlight the fact that it’s simple and easy to use because the people using this product are not designers, they’re marketers just like you and I.
This was the first variation we created:
It was about make impressive infographics. Instead of easy to use infographic creator, it now says make impressive infographics. This focuses on empowering the customer.
We also reduce the stress of how complex and hard it is by saying you can create these in less than 10 minutes. And instead of showing a visual of how to drag and drop the product, you actually get a visual of what the outcome could look like. And, of course, we made various changes in many different other things like a bigger call to action button.
We removed a lot of the bullet points and we changed a lot of it. Most of it is now focused on the person behind the screen and putting those emotions upfront.
The proof is in the percentage points
We got a 24% increase in registrations and a 76% increase in creation of presentations and infographics. More people were using the product.
Interestingly enough, if you haven’t seen this one before, this is the second variation we created for them:
Again, there’s nothing in here about the product. You’ll notice there’s no image, there’s no cartoon of the product. It’s actually a rabbit in a hat. It’s a magician.
And interestingly enough, this actually increased their revenue by 74%.
So why am I telling you all this?
Because before we dive into the ideas and tips that I have for you, and I have so many today, I just wanted to once again reinforce the idea and the concept that emotion is imperative and it’s not just in social media, it’s with everything that you do.
Because emotions affect decisions, decisions affect conversions, and obviously conversions affect revenue.
How the largest brands leverage emotion on social media
Let’s dig into the ways that you can use emotion in social media. And specifically I’m going to talk a lot about Facebook ads because I know that that’s what most people have been asking me about. Specifically, how you can do that to grab your prospect’s attention and convert them.
Okay, so what I thought we’d do is start with showing you a few examples of companies who are doing it so well. And then I’ll show you how you can do it. So here’s an interesting and such a cool ad by Nike.
No shoes, no product, no pricing, no features.
They’re simply making it about the customer.
I think this is one of the most brilliant videos I’ve seen by Nike that is so appropriate for the channel. Remember that you can use emotion in different channels. You can use it on your landing pages, you can use it on your website.
But what’s really cool is that you can adapt emotion, you can use it to target the specific people that are on the different pages or the traffic sources and this is done so well.
Again, there’s nothing in here about the product.
It’s just about saving you time and kind of taking the minute to tell you, hey you spend so much time on your Facebook feed. So here we saved you like 45 minutes, let’s use that time to go for a run. That’s it.
Let’s look at another example.
The emotional context of ads
So Thinx is a really cool company. And they use their ads on Facebook to actually address the biggest concerns that their customers have. And I think this is brilliant.
They surveyed their customers, they understood how to run successful surveys.
What’s really cool is that they surveyed their target audience and their customers and they came up with the biggest questions and concerns people have before purchasing their product. Let me show you.
This product is insane, but essentially these are period-proof undies. So Thinx used their ads to answer people’s questions. So it says, I have sensitive skin. What is Thinx really made of? And the company just answer the question: cotton, nylon and magic.
Question two, how hygienic are Thinx?
Answer: Squeeky. And so it goes.
Thinx really go in depth. I just really love this because this is a phenomenal example of companies that understand their target ordinance.
They took the time to really understand what’s stopping people from buying from them, their emotional response to the products and they addressed it.
Essentially they don’t just answer people’s questions, they also show a different visual so that you feel comfortable. So even though the product is the center of these ads, it really works so well because it addresses the biggest concerns people have.
What kind of life do your customers dream of?
Shopify also does a fantastic job when they say get more out of life.
Here’s the thing:
They know that when someone starts their own business, and that’s usually what people do with Shopify, they start their own eCommerce business. It’s not just about starting a business and making money…
You start your journey free, sell online, in store, and on Facebook and Shopify build your brand on the biggest eCommerce site. So you can see on the bottom, they do mention the product, but they talk about getting more out of life.
The image has nothing to do with what a Shopify store looks like because starting your own business means that you’re going to get more out of life. You’re going to go on that trip you’ve always wanted. You’re going to be set free so you can do whatever you want.
Everything in this ad is geared towards that promise, that emotional kind of feeling that people have.
So when you’re thinking about should I start my own business or not, these are the different emotional triggers that persuade people to start their own business.
Selling outcomes
Now, Lego is one of my most famous examples. I love using them. This is a very, very old ad. But I want to show you an old ad and I’m going to show you a new ad.
Obviously social media did not exist during the time when this ad came out. But see how cool this is.
So when you’re looking at the ad, it says what it is is beautiful. And most of these kids are holding different things that they’ve built. They don’t really have a purpose except for maybe the planes. And the idea here is that it’s about being proud, happy and content. Because when you’re selling to parents, parents don’t really care about the type of game that their kid is playing.
But when you say, hey, people, kids who play with Lego become proud of themselves, they feel confident and whatever they build, they feel very good. That is something that a parent buys.
So they’re not buying the opportunity to allow their kids to build a plane or a castle or a Batmobile. What they’re actually purchasing is happiness for their child.
So this was an old magazine ad. Now I want to show you one of Lego’s ads from not too long ago.
So one of the sentences they said was They’re in messy rooms everywhere.
This is basically an adaptation of what they used to do in the 50s and 60s which is, we don’t talk about what you can build – which they do actually- but you don’t really talk about what you can build with it.
More importantly, you talk about these kids and their bright future. Because if you have a kid who is playing in a messy room of Lego, then your kid might end up a huge scientists or build the next big tech thing. So it really is fantastic.
And here’s another example of Lego.
They’re just so brilliant… The way they use Lego to show you that you can actually achieve your dreams.
What they’re saying is this:
Kids that play with Lego could become astronauts. They can become rock stars. They could be firefighters. And whatever they do, they’ll feel proud, they’ll feel happy, they’ll be smart and they’ll be productive kids. Lego is essentially selling this reality- the reality they crave – to parents.
So Lego isn’t about the features or the price. It’s about something so much bigger. It’s about the emotional value.
How Duolingo makes you want to learn a language
Duolingo is a really cool example. I love it. It’s an app that helps you learn different languages. They teach you German and English and French and all sorts of stuff like that.
But what they did is essentially put an ad on Facebook that says our high Valyrian courses here. Perfect for when you need to inquire where your dragons are. Don’t wait for winter to come. Start now.
It’s a fantastic way of using emotion because everyone’s into Game of Thrones. Everyone loves it. And it’s a fantastic way of triggering those emotions, creating that affinity with people and getting people to click on their ad.
Okay. So these were just a few examples of some really cool brands and how they use emotion.
The four ways you can leverage emotion to boost your social media conversions
Now I’m going to dive into the four ways that you can leverage emotion to boost social media conversions.
1. The emotional value beats the benefits
Emotional value always triumphs over the benefit.
So rather than focusing on the service for the product that you’re selling, make sure that you are focusing on the outcome.
This is not just about Facebook ads, it also applies to your Facebook posts, your Tweets, anything that you’re doing on LinkedIn.
When you’re thinking about your messaging, focus on the outcome that people are going to get. How will people feel after buying your product or your service? To grab people’s attention you really need to make a promise. So what is the one thing people will walk away with after buying your product or hiring you?
A task management platform like Trello or Asana aren’t selling the ability to get a task done. There’s selling the opportunity to sort out all of that mess that you have in your head, reduce the stress and perhaps even impress your manager or your colleagues. That is the emotional outcomes.
So when you’re thinking about writing your next post, or if you’re thinking about writing a new ad or whatever it is, I want you to think about the fact that emotional value triumphs and it always win over the benefit.
Mel Robbins is a really cool example of this. She has an online course and, in her ad, she speaks directly to the camera. She says, imagine for just one second how awesome it would be if you could stop holding yourself back. She says this to the camera and she introduces her online course for building self-confidence.
She jumps straight into the emotional turmoil of self-doubt and holding yourself back. She shows segments of videos of people hugging her and thanking her for saving their life. She taps into the real desire of her target audience.
She doesn’t focus on how much it costs or what you’re going to learn, or I dunno, the different steps you have to take in order to enroll in the course. She just focuses on that promise for a better life and a higher self-esteem.
She really focuses on the challenges that people face. There’s no mention of features and it’s really focused on the emotional value.
So this is tip number one:
When you’re looking at your ads, when you jump off this workshop today, I want you to go to your Facebook ads or to look at your Tweets or to look at your Facebook posts and ask yourself: Am I focusing on the emotional value or the benefit?
2. Tell a story
This is a great quote that I love it:
“Stories of personal and emotionally compelling engage more of the brain and thus a better remembered than simply stating a set of facts.”
Now we’ve all seen this happen. This happens where there’s a huge calls with hundreds, sometimes thousands of casualties that need urgent donations or resources and help and unfortunately they struggle to get that help, right? So they’re trying but they just can’t get it.
But suddenly a compelling story about one person’s journey, their struggle, their challenges turns everything around and donations come flooding through. This is the power of telling a story because for us, we as people, we don’t really register numbers and graphs. We are not natural statisticians.
What we register, what we take in, is emotion.
We don’t remember numbers, statistics, or even pricing. What we do remember is how people make us feel. The more compelling the story, the more personal and similar your story or the story that you’re telling in your ads or you post is to your target audience, with your customer story – the more it will resonate and inspire action.
One thing about telling stories that you need to know is this:
You are not the hero of the story. Your customer is. If you think about every story you’ve ever heard of ever read in your life from Harry Potter to Star Wars to, I don’t know, those are my favorite ones.
In every story you can think of has two main characters that are really the main characters in the story.
And what normally happens is that this everyday character who’s just a regular person, just like you and I is faced with a challenge. Something happens and they need to solve it. And sometimes they try and they try and they try and they fail and they just can’t. And moments before they’re about to give in, suddenly a wise person appears, a mentor, right?
So this will be Dumbledore or Yoda. Someone appears and changes everything for them. Now this person, this mentor, like Yoda for example, they are not going to solve all the problems for Luke Skywalker. He’s not going to do things instead of him. What he’s going to do is empower Luke to become the hero he was always meant to be.
The mentor is always there to guide them. In marketing you are that mentor. You or the company, are the mentor that’s going to help the hero find a solution to their problem and solve it.
The customers are the heroes. Not you. Not your product. Not your features.
A single person’s journey can move us to tears, laughter, empathy, and change our behavior and even our beliefs. That is the power of storytelling.
Personal stories that resonate and spark emotions within us. That cause us to take action. That’s why storytelling is such a powerful persuasive technique.
Now there’re different ways you can use video ads and copy to tell a compelling story. You don’t have to use videos. And I know I shared quite a few examples, but I’d like to put theory into action and I’ll show you exactly how to do that.
Using storytelling in social media marketing
As I mentioned, the best stories of those that resonate with your prospects and make them say, Whoa, that happened to me, or Oh my God, that’s me or damn that could happen to me.
So Sharny and Julius have a great example here. It’s a Facebook ad. She teaches how to do workouts at home and she says:
I have six kids. So my workouts have to be at home and potentially involve a kid. Fit Mom is all I do. It works for me. And the support group is amazing. You can join us here.
So the image in here is fantastic. It’s phenomenal. You have three kids in the image. I don’t know how she has six. You have three kids in this image and this photo… it is so realistic, right? Because amongst us, the people who are parents know that when you have a ton of kids or when you even have one things can be messy, you don’t have the time to put on fantastic clothes, go to the gym and workout.
Sometimes you just have to do it at home. And this is a story that resonates with so many different people, especially her target audience, which is parents.
On the right, it’s an ad that I used. So it’s a whole story about the way that I sat for 20 hours, I kid you not, trying to book the Harry Potter show on stage in London. It made no sense.
I had a newborn at home and I was adamant I was going to sit there until I could purchase the tickets. Spoiler alert. I didn’t get the tickets. It was crazy. The sale went on and it just, I didn’t manage to get them. But I did do it again a month later and got the tickets. But the reason I’m telling you all this is because this ad is for our Masterclass for Emotion Sells.
It’s where I teach how to use emotion. And it’s just an example of how you do irrational things in the name of emotion. And I’m sure that we all have a weird story or a rational story that one time we did something that made no sense. Everyone thought that we were crazy but we did it anyhow.
That’s the power of emotion. So I use this in ads. Now, it was a very successful ad and I know that some of you may think: well I don’t think long copy works and people don’t read. So we should really have short ads.
As you can see on the left, Sharny and Julius do have a short ad with short copy, but I do want to say something. I found many, many times that when the story is compelling, when you tell a story that people want to read, the content can be as long as you want.
In fact, I have consistently found specifically that our Facebook ads with longer copy works significantly better than the ads with short copy.
Here’s another example. On the left is an ad with short copy and on the right we have long copy. The one with the longer copy had almost 200% more conversions than the shorter one. So people do read, you just have to give them a reason to. And that reason is a story.
These are just a few examples of how you can tell stories. And as you notice, I didn’t share videos because not everyone has the budget to create a video. Thought you don’t have to have a budget to create a video. Simply using your phone to film yourself or asking customers to film themselves on their phone is more than enough. But we’ll get into that in a second.
We talked about the fact that emotional value always beats the benefit. And we talked about telling stories. Now let’s talk about images.
3. Optimizing for strategic images
One of the most important rules that I follow with every landing page, email ad or post is that you can’t just say it, you have to make people feel it.
It’s actually one of the biggest pillars of my emotional targeting framework and it’s based on the emotional effects that images have on us.
Don’t just say it, make them feel it.
The images and the colors that you use in your Facebook ads or posts or on Twitter really have a huge impact. And they will determine if people see your post and if they think it’s worth giving it a moment to consider checking out your guide or clicking on the ad or engaging with you versus leaving.
All the images that you choose have to be really compelling and they have to make people stop in their tracks.
Here’s the thing about that. I mentioned at the beginning that we see so many ads and so many brands are trying to target us. Those colors and images are key to actually grabbing people’s attention. The thing about it is that it doesn’t need to be an image of your product like in the picture below:
The company on the left says: hot sale up to 75% off, save $5 on with this coupon code. It’s a very, very direct strategy in terms of sales. But it’s just an image of the product. And at the end of the day, as we said, images, not only have the job of grabbing people’s attention, but they also make people feel a certain way.
On the right we have an image by Google and it’s basically Get $300 to try Google Cloud Platform. This is very product oriented and they’re not making good use of their images.
This is very common. When it comes to choosing images, most ads are similar to the way landing pages and websites tend to use an image of the product that they’re selling or something to represent it.
So what I would actually love to see you guys do is to use strategic images.
Lego and Slack highlight the value of the product versus what it is. Lego highlights the pride and the happiness that kids feel when playing with Lego and imply the kind of future that your kids could have if they play with Lego. And Slack focuses on the relief that you’ll feel and the fun you can have without all those meetings. And all of that time that you’re basically taken away from your actual work because you have to sit in a meeting.
So Slack spares you that pain. And it really is cool because when you think about it, these images aren’t images of the product on the left. Lego doesn’t use an image of what the box of Lego looks like. And on the right, Slack doesn’t show a screenshot of what their product looks like. They’re just talking about the emotional value.
So when you’re thinking about choosing your images and your colors, think about testing a few different visuals for your ads. Videos work really well, but images go a long way too.
Now you can brainstorm with your team about the possible outcomes and the value you get from using your product or your service, and then show that in your posts. Most importantly, talk to your clients, survey them or their customers and ask about the values and the benefits.
4. Leverage social proof
Social proof is one of the most powerful tools you can use on any page, especially in social media. There’s power in numbers. The more people we see going in a certain direction, the more appealing it is to us.
Mention the number of people or the clients or the customers who are already using your solution.
Now remember that social proof isn’t just there to tell people how amazing your product or your service is. It’s there to remove roadblocks.
Testimonials and reviews can be used to reduce common concerns that people have, hesitations and address specific questions that come up from people. And you can even use written testimonials as the ad copy, or you can include screenshots of mentions and reviews that you’ve received.
Rather than people having to take your word that your service include round the clock customer service, you could actually just use a customer story detailing how, I don’t know, a specific representative helped them out at 2:00 AM just solve an issue. That is so much more powerful than you saying, Hey, we have 24 hour support.
Social proof in action
So let me show you a few examples. Over here, Christmas Abbott, she uses social proof.
Wow. Over 11,000 people are joining my BBX challenges.
The person that you’re seeing in this screenshot is not Christmas Abbott. It’s one of the people who took her challenge. And this program changed her life.
It’s a video and, as you can see, this woman is just using her phone so you can go a long way in terms of authenticity using regular phones to do your videos.
You don’t have to spend a ton of money on branding videos and beautiful videos like Lego might do.
This is an example of how you can use numbers to amplify your social proof and just have testimonials of people talking about the change that you made for them.
In the middle picture, there’s an example of someone who is giving you a testimonial and they just actually say, my back pain ruined my life.
I was working 12 hour days at a call center and this guy goes on and explains how tough is life was and how this company saved him.
Personal stories, testimonials can be used very well in Facebook ads or your posts.
On the right is one of my favorite ones, obviously from Ellen DeGeneres to Norm Kelly. People can’t stop raving about these no tie shoelaces. So what they did is essentially just put in a screenshot of Ellen DeGeneres say, “If there are three things that I love, it’s Canadians, a good cause and no-tie shoelaces.”
It’s a phenomenal use of social proof. Not all of us can get Ellen DeGeneres to promote us, but you don’t have to have a big brand or someone in authority that gives you this testimonial. Not that it hurts, but any customer, any client of yours who can provide a genuine testimonial or review is perfect.
And you can look on Twitter and you can look in Quora and you can look on Linkedln. People are having conversations about you somewhere or about your industry, somewhere online. And you can use that as a great way to promote your product.
Wrapping things up
Okay, let’s summarize. Here are your next steps:
Review your social media ads and posts. I want you to think about how you’re coming across. Are you highlighting the value or the benefits? Are you telling the customer story? Do your images and colors support the emotional strategy that you are going for? And can you leverage social proof?
These are the four things that to focus on now when this workshop is over so you don’t have to start crafting new stuff.
Just go back to what’s already live and see if you can optimize it with these four tips. Okay.
One last thing about emotion
Here’s the interesting thing about emotion that we didn’t talk about.
Emotion doesn’t only just get you to buy things. It’s not just about that initial purchase where you target people’s emotions and that’s it. They buy from you one time and they’re gone. In fact, emotion keeps people buying.
When you focus on emotion – when you start integrating emotion into everything that you’re doing in your emails, in your pricing pages and the stories that you tell on social media – you’re not only going to get first time clients or customers, but you are going to keep people for much longer because they will see the value in what you’re offering.
The best example I can offer is me. So I started telling you about my biggest fear in life and how I hate flying and how I jumped out of a plane for a guy.
But here is the interesting thing. Today I have over 800 jumps. I am a skydiver. I absolutely freaking loved jumping out of a plane. It was incredible.
So this is such a self-empowering thing to feel. I didn’t get the guy, but I felt so much better. But I felt so good about skydiving, I had to jump again. Then, I became a professional skydiver, did all sorts of competitions and flew all over the world…
And it’s funny because I still am very scared of flying. But what’s cool about it is that I love the way skydiving makes me feel. And that is actually the key to marketing in general. When you understand the emotional value that you get from using a product or from connecting with a certain freelancer or a service or a SaaS business, then you will stay for longer. You will connect. And you will become a lot more connected to this company.
Emotion doesn’t only make you buy one time, it keeps you coming back.
Start asking, what’s my customers goal? And the reason for that is actually pretty simple because only when your customers achieve their goals will you achieve your own.
That’s my favorite quote by Bryan Eisenberg, my dear friends. And I think this is what I’m going to leave you with.
If you have any questions whatsoever throw them into the comment section below and my team and I will be happy to answer all of your questions.
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