Creating Emotional Resonance - What Role Does AI Play in Marketing?
Emotional resonance — it can make or break a campaign
If you can connect emotionally with the right audience, you can boost brand awareness and build credibility. However, if you get this wrong, you could come across as just another company in a sea of ads begging for attention.
With the rise of AI-generated content, there is a lot of chatter in the digital marketing world. How far will AI writing assistants go, and what are the most significant considerations?
Some of the concerns of AI-generative are accuracy, misleading content, and bias. However, another key issue has many marketers wary of AI-generated content — a lack of emotional, human-generated writing.
This guide will cover why emotional resonance matters, the role of AI, and the next steps to take to ensure ongoing success.
What Is Emotional Resonance in Content Marketing?
In content marketing, emotional resonance is when you evoke emotion through writing. It helps you connect with your readers, showing them you understand their desires, passions, and pain points. In most cases, the idea is to show these readers that your brand is the solution to whatever they seek, whether it be the best landscaping service, the top blog for trending recipes, or the best website design company for small businesses.
Making this approach a priority is vital in 2023 and beyond, as indifference towards brands doubled since 2018, and 82% of consumers admit they’re not excited about brands. Consumers are overstimulated, and to cut through the noise, a brand has to be something special.
Since this strategy is people-oriented, it brings a significant influence on brand marketing. Consumers are living in a world where they are bombarded with ads and endless brand stories. How can you stand out? What emotional responses could you lean on to strengthen your connection with your readers? Empathy? Humor? Friendship? Nostalgia? Joy? Sadness? A combination?
How Does AI Relate to All of This?
Image source: Unsplash/Alex Knight
Artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning, natural language processing, chatbots, and machine learning are some of the terms associated with the latest and hottest marketing trends. But how do they relate to emotion recognition or human emotional states? Since tools and platforms like ChatGPT have no emotional intelligence, can they generate content your readers connect with?
For AI to produce the best possible campaigns, AI technology needs to mimic human emotion, which is the premise behind affective computing, otherwise known as emotion AI. This subset of AI can assess, imitate, and respond to human emotions. So, its potential applications are much more far-reaching than marketing. For example, this work, led by the MIT Media Lab, is being closely monitored based on the possibilities and use cases in areas like healthcare.
How Is Emotion AI Being Used in Marketing Today?
As of 2023, AI tools are still relatively new. No one is entirely sure where this technology will bring the industry next. However, many are already leveraging the advantages of emotion AI to improve engagement, understand consumers, and complete market research surrounding consumers’ emotional responses.
Several companies have already emerged, including Boston-based Affectiva — an AI company specializing in advertising research and automotive AI. The company uses technology that detects facial expressions and reactions to help brands improve their marketing messages.
In theory, it’s fascinating and slightly frightening, but in the real world, how effective this technology is has yet to be determined. There has been plenty of pushback, with some experts believing AI is misreading human emotion. This issue, combined with privacy concerns and the cultural variabilities of human emotion, has many brands wondering what role AI plays, if any.
Creating Winning, Emotional Content
The limitations and potential negative implications of AI must be considered when aiming to evoke powerful emotions that resonate with your readers. The goal is to connect with your readers based on their deepest-held beliefs, so they become interested in your content, loyal to your brand, and ultimately more likely to buy from you.
AI or not, it can seem challenging to deploy this strategy in inherently less emotional industries. But the following tips will guide you to make even the driest content more inspiring and motivating.
Use AI for the Right Processes
Depending on the storyline, brand, and objective, emotions can range from anger to fear, excitement to sadness. However, today’s consumers are well aware of advertisers who try to hype their content. So, developing trust is vital to this strategy. Building a genuine connection helps build that trusting relationship, and evoking key emotions is part of that — but only when done right.
The last thing you want to do is hype up your content and not deliver, which is a concern with content exclusively written by AI technology.
Instead, use the tools available to you to automate the most time-consuming processes, leaving the emotional writing to expert human writers. For example, there are plenty of ways to target the right readers based on SEO techniques, real-time keyword planning, and what you know about search engine algorithms, but these are just tools to help increase traffic to your site. You will not get repeat visitors or build a loyal following or customer base without quality content.
Use tools like a Keyword Research Tool and Scripted Recommended Content. These AI-powered tools will help you streamline and automate the initial strategy process, helping you ensure the right readers find your content. Other tools, like SmartMatch technology, will help you simplify and improve the success of your hiring and workflow processes. Find an expert writer who understands your audience based on their verified expertise in seconds.
Choose Emotive Language
It can be easy to slip into patterns of using the same language, but over time, both you and your readers will get bored. Expressive language takes your content from drab to captivating. Tools like Grammarly will help you jazz up your language with adjective suggestions.
What words and speaking style does your target reader use? When you use precise, articulate language, it shows the reader you put time into your content. When your audience sees your content is creative and well-crafted, they see you as a thought leader rather than another brand vying for their dollar.
Ask yourself: What emotions do my audience members regularly experience? A tech company might highlight frustration when an application freezes or doesn't load properly. With emotive language, your audience can begin to relate to your brand.
Although AI could hypothetically connect with readers based on the experiences of others online, writing about frozen software applications, issues with quality and accuracy remain. It’s not a gamble worth risking when your brand’s reputation is on the line, which is why combining AI-powered tools and writing with a human touch is so crucial.
Take a Stand
Many marketers fall into the trap of being too objective and formal in their writing. But what makes your readers return repeatedly is knowing your brand personality — what are its opinions, moods, and feelings? As you would when making a new friend, you want to know the unique details about a brand you've just stumbled upon. The last thing the reader needs is stiff sales copy that tells them nothing about who you are.
The more generic a brand's language, the harder it is for them to create salience (memorability in the minds of their audience). Salience involves the long-term memory mechanism in the human brain. It helps people distinguish one thing from all other similar things. As you might've guessed, this greatly comes into play when brands in the same industry compete with one another for attention and sales.
Ask yourself what your core personality traits are and whether you are showing them regularly. What are your brand differentiators, and are you talking about them often enough?
Create Resonance With Your Audience
Emotions are a powerful tool in content marketing and must be used wisely. Creating emotional resonance makes everything easier — like gaining followers on social media, converting website visitors to customers, receiving positive reviews, and encouraging word-of-mouth marketing.
It’s an area that continues to attract attention, as studies of brand emotion and personality are now recognized as research fields. Data scientists are also hard at work, creating more advanced emotion analytics so businesses can track and understand their audience better. Emotion-centric marketing is a trend that will only grow, especially as AI technology advances.
Scripted: The Only Platform Providing Both AI and Human Expertise for Content Creation
When considering emotional resonance in marketing, you don’t need to choose between AI and human-generated content. Those who will be the most competitive understand the value of balancing the two. Use AI tools where it makes the most sense— generate headlines, outlines, keywords, or even rough first drafts — and hire human writers to ensure a polished final copy.
Scripted has long been a trusted source of quality content and is evolving with AI technology. Scripted Copilot is now the backbone of Scripted’s technology platform, a content creation assistant integrated throughout the platform. From start to finish, the core objectives are supercharged efficiency and a high-quality end product.
Ready to access human creativity and expertise combined with AI power? Get started today!
Published by Scripted Writers on Monday, July 3, 2023 in Content Writing, Emotions, Engagement, Writing.
