The Importance of Emotional Connection in Marketing

**SPEAKER_2** (0:04)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:17)
Hello and welcome back to the show. I'm Stephen Sakach here with Mike Liwski and Tullio Siragusa. Hey guys.

**Mike Liwski** (0:26)
Hello. Hey Stephen.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:28)
Hey, this is our 50th show of our producer series. So today we're going to dig into the strategy behind brand storytelling and the psychology that drives customer engagement. So today we're tackling one of the most important yet often overlooked aspects of marketing, emotional connection. So it's easy to focus on clicks and conversions and ROI. But if a brand isn't resonating on a human level, it's just noise. Tullio, we've talked a lot about the role of empathy in business. What does emotional connection really mean in marketing?

**Tullio Siragusa** (1:07)
The best way I can describe this is, think of the concept of going for a job interview. And you're going to go buy a suit, whether you're a man or a woman, you're going to go buy a suit. And the buying of the suit is just a transaction. You go to a store, you pick out what you want, you put it on, you try it, you fulfill that transaction. But that doesn't really, that's not really what you're looking for. You're looking for something that's gonna make you show up super powerful, confident, because you wanna lock in the job. So in marketing, you can sell to the need of that transaction, which is what often happens. I need a suit, I have a suit, let's connect you.
Or you can understand the underlying desire that the buyer has, which is to land the job, to show up powerfully, to show up confident. And that's an emotional need. So how you position yourself and how you cater to that individual has a different resonance if it's just a matter of filling a transaction or giving them access to fulfilling an experience that resonates with them for that particular moment. And that's really the thing that's often overlooked. There's not enough emphasis on the story telling in understanding the psychology of the buyer, why people are buying and what makes them feel seen, right? So it's sort of like in design thinking you have these first two stages. One is to be super curious. Curious is about why are they looking for a seat? Why do they need it for? What's the outcome going to be from buying that? And then empathizing. How would I want to be taking care of? What is it that my emotional need that needs to be fulfilled? How am I going to help this individual feel powerful and confident? So it takes a whole different meaning to be empathetic and have emotion, drive to emotions in marketing and just fulfilling a transactional need.

**Stephen Sakach** (3:16)
Mike, what are your thoughts?

**Mike Liwski** (3:17)
Yeah, I would totally agree with Tullio. In fact, I wanted to share a story that might illustrate this point. Just yesterday, I happened to be on a meeting with one of our clients here at the agency at Zero Company. And this company, they work in the recruiting, the resume writing area of the job market.
And we were speaking with the owner, and he was going through and articulating for us, really like what's behind their organization, why he started the organization. And I'll just say two things that came out. There's a lot that he brought out, but just a couple of differentiating points that he made. Because it can be a fairly commoditized market, especially now with ChatGBT, try to compete in that market. And number one, he said, one of the things when we're putting together resumes and we're helping individuals in this time of need, because there's a lot of emotion going on in a transition career-wise. He said, we're not just about getting them the interview. We really want to focus on getting them the job. And I thought, I go, wow, that's a partner that I would want along my side in that time. And the other thing he was saying is that one of the things that's so gratifying is when a client comes back to them and says, you know what? I got the job, but not only that, but I'm making like another 20, 25,000, $50,000 more than I was in my previous role. And thank you for that. And that to me is the kind of emotion that an organization can create by really articulating what's behind what they're doing, like why they do it and can do that. And it obviously matters, the organizations that have this really strong connection, they do grow faster, right? They retain clients longer, and they also drive employee engagement, because imagine working for that company, and you're now driven to help these individuals out. So I thought it was kind of a neat story to just share about how a company who could be in a pretty difficult market could still create that right emotion. So that, you know, and that's, you know, they do that once, that employee, that client is going to come back to them time and time again, whenever that need is there again.