What is Sensory Marketing?

What is Sensory Marketing?

Sensory marketing is an advertising strategy intended to appeal to one or more of the five human senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch.

Sensory marketing strategy triggers your brain into thinking about certain feelings, thoughts, and memories to create a brand image in a customer’s mind. For example, like the smell of lemon in summer makes you think of Minute Made lemonade. The trend of using multi-sensory marketing is on the rise. Traditional marketing assumes that consumers consider product factors like price, features, and utility. Sensory marketing connects the consumer’s life to experiences and feelings.

Smell in Marketing

How good is your sense of smell? Scent marketing uses the right fragrance to convey memorable brand identity, and scents are instantly linked to memories. This is where direct mail and print marketing have the upper hand, where digital marketing lacks the ability to have any sensory impact on potential customers other than sight and sound.

Today hotels, resorts, healthcare institutions, and retail stores go as far as pumping out their desired scents through air conditioning systems to make customers feel welcomed and relaxed. Stores are using scents to attract people to enter their store and studies show that customers will shop on average 44% longer.

What smells work? Scent marketing researchers say that aromas of lavender, basil, cinnamon, and citrus flavors are relaxing, whereas peppermint, thyme, and rosemary are invigorating. Ginger, cardamom, licorice, and chocolate tend to stir romantic feelings, while rose promotes positivity and happiness. Another recent study showed that the smell of oranges tended to calm the fears of dental patients awaiting major procedures.

Did you know that smell is the sense most powerfully linked to emotion, with over 75% of our feelings being generated by scent. The most successful sensory marketing campaigns appeal to multiple senses. The more senses appealed to, the more effective the branding and advertising will be.

Think Patented can incorporate a variety of aromas in your next printed piece. Optimize the effectiveness by tapping the benefits of sensory marketing. Contact your account executive or call 937-353-2299.