Using Emotions to Successfully Attract the Clients You Want

Our prospective clients learn with their heads, but they decide with their hearts. After years of research, often, when a client chooses to work with an architect it simply comes down to their feelings. They choose their team by deciding who they like the most.

This week on EntreArchitect Podcast, Using Emotions to Successfully Attract the Clients You Want.

Do you ever make decisions based on emotion? We don’t always buy based on price or features, more often we buy because something makes us feel a certain way.

When we’re developing a marketing strategy for our firms, we should consider the part that emotions play in the decisions that our clients make. Professor Antiono Damasio at University of Southern California argues that, emotion is a necessary ingredient to almost all decisions. When we are confronted with a decision, emotions from previous, related experiences affix values to the options we are considering. These emotions create preferences which lead to our decision.

Our feelings help us make our decisions. That’s why storytelling is so powerful; they trigger emotions and feelings. In EA140, architect storyteller Jeff Echols shared How To Use Your Story to Find the Work You Want.

How can we craft our branding to be based on emotion? How do we use emotion to effectively find the clients we want?

Here are 4 Fundamentals about Emotions to use in Marketing:

Knowing Who We Serve Matters

Without knowing who we serve, how can we have any idea how to emotionally connect with those people? Who are you serving? Who do you want to serve?

Where do these people work and play? What makes them happy? What are they trying to achieve in their search for an architect?

Sensorial Experiences Matter

What does an architect do? When answering this question, think beyond the traditional descriptions. How can we develop strategies and services that are experienced with every sense? Do we have strategies around sight, sounds, touch, and more?

Think along the lines of experiencing design through virtual reality or presenting hand-sketched schematic designs with freshly baked cookies. Do you think your client will talk to their friends about that type of meeting?

Using an Imaginative Approach Matter

Immaginative systems and strategies make the process more real for our clients. It causes them to pause and think about what’s different than they expected it to be. How can we create a different and imaginative website to trigger emotions? What experiences can we give that feel different? What can spice up our proposals to give pause?

How can clients’ first point of contact feel different than another firm?

The Words We Use Matter

The words we choose have the opportunity to make a client feel one way or the other. In residential architecture, are we designing a house or creating a home? A house has a function, but a home is filled with feelings, love, and memory.

Using intentionality with the words we use goes a long way.

To learn more about emotional marketing, check out these books:

Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping–Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond by Paco Underhill

Emotional Branding: The New Paradigm for Connecting Brands to People by Marc Gobe

I want to know your favorite book on marketing! Share on the EntreArchitect Facebook group today.

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Photo Credit: Shutterstock / Dmitry Guzhanin