Fear, Hope and Love. The three marketing levers

You can sell anything resting your actions on three basic emotions. Each of them has its advantages and disandvantages. Each one calls for a different strategy. Check out what tactics does your company employ. Find out which one of them influences your choice of goods and services most.

We found some very interesting reflections on emotions in marketing on Seth Godin's blog. According to Godin, people usually base their actions on one of the three emotions:

Fear, Hope, Love.

Anyone creating his product image ought to use at least one of them. Furthermore you can rest your business idea on the three.

Fear is the key used by insurance, pharmaceutical and security guard companies as well as alarm systems producers. It's also used by politicians who frighten citizens with corruption, connections, terrorism, criminals or manacing neighbor.

Hope is the most obvious emotion from marketers point of view. Anytime you buy a new product you hope for something. You hope to save time or/and money, to make someone smile, to feel better. Business sections of many internet services offer readers hope to earn money taking advantage of the breaking news. All the politicians would like to offer hope, nonetheless the ones who fullfil their promises are rare. Still it doesn't seem to matter, as peole do not draw conclusions and keep on believing their hopes will be met by the opposition.

Love is the stronges marketing emotion. If you fall in love with a product, you'll forgive it even if it doesn't meet some of your expectations. Consider Apple freaks. There are a lot of players that could be said to be better than iPod, or phones that surpass iPhone. Still the gadgets have their diehard supporters.

Love gets you to protest when they change your favourite beverage formula. It makes you smile when you notice someone wearing a T-shirt with your beloved brand logo. In political marketing love for a politician may make you support him no matter what his deeds are.

Interestingly, some product cathegories tend to gravitate towards particular emotions. Physicians offering check ups use fear, while oncologists in their clinics offer mostly hope.

Expensive restaurants face problems when selling fear - healthy food isn't much of a thriving business. On the other hand, singles bars prosper on selling hope.

Google and Apple are loved by their users.

What's the fastest way to build a brand? Selling fear. How do you do the best business? Offering hope and aiming for love. But you should love your customers beforehand.

Seth Godin - born in 1960, writer, marketing guru, and author of - permission marketing concept - was the founder of Yoyodyne, one of the first companies offering online marketing, sold to Yahoo in 1998. At present he's running Squidoo - a community service that consumers can use to recommend goods and services.