BtoB Marketing: Arouse great emotions in your customers!
The driving role of emotions in B2B marketing is a fact established by research and experts.
In a context where Marketing and Sales automation powered by digitalisation and AI agents is set to play a growing role in B2B markets, what if you chose to make emotion a lever for business performance?
To convince you, take a fresh look at the variety of emotions observed. They can be individual or collective, personal or professional. Positive or negative, they contribute to or undermine the customer’s decision to work with you.
How can you effectively activate the emotional register?
First, avoid excesses. Then articulate the registers of emotion and reason. The range of emotions to be aroused, and how to do it will depend upon the initial situation, the marketing strategy, the commercial content, and the specific objectives of each sales meeting.
This focus on both sides of the same coin in the customer experience will boost your commercial impact for a marginal financial investment. What if the future of marketing was all about giving your customers good vibes?
The role of emotions in B2B marketing is a well-established fact
In B2B, decisions are rational on the surface but emotional at their core. In the overwhelming majority of cases, a decision is triggered by an emotion . Neurologist Antonio Damasio has demonstrated that without emotional processes, subjects become incapable of making ‘rational’ decisions. An analysis conducted by Binet and Field in 2019 of 1,200 B2B marketing campaigns in the US concluded that marketing strategies incorporating emotions are seven times more effective than purely rational approaches.
In B2B, decision-making does not pit emotion against rationality. Decision-making combines cognitive analysis (return on investment, performance, compliance) and emotional regulation (perceived risk, security, professional image). Emotion is therefore not a parasitic bias: it is a mechanism for guidance and prioritisation.
And yet, in the day-to-day running of many companies, there are numerous obstacles to considering it as a subject for marketing and sales teams to include in their agenda. The reasons given are cultural: ‘A technological or industrial market is structured by technical and operational performance and prices’; ‘Expressing emotions is inappropriate in our professional environment’; ‘As a product expert, it is not my job to tackle this subject, but rather that of the salespeople’; ‘Customers’ decision-making processes are complex and structured, so I don’t see how emotions can influence the system.’
Revisiting the field of emotions
Let’s go beyond the seven primary emotions of fear, anger, joy, surprise, sadness, contempt and disgust. The emotions most frequently cited in B2B are fear of risk, need for security, desire for control, and professional recognition. Fear of risk weighs more heavily than the lure of gain in decision-making. The perceived reputational cost influences decisions, and avoiding mistakes takes priority over optimisation.
An emotion is also characterised by its impact using three criteria:
- The degree of pleasure felt: this ranges from pleasure and satisfaction to displeasure and dissatisfaction. Customers often make decisions to avoid negative emotions. Maintaining a good level of pleasure can be achieved through a partnership-based relationship, valuing the decision-maker, or long-term support.
- The incentive to act: this ranges from excitement and stimulation to lethargy and apathy. Driving the customer to take action does matter to improve the conversion rate of a marketing action. Examples include the production of customer case studies, guarantees, figures and verifications.
- The feeling of control and power: this spans from mastery and empowerment to submission and powerlessness. Customers hate feeling deprived of their freedom of choice and decision-making. They want to take ownership of the supplier’s proposal, especially when it brings something new. By using return on investment simulation tools, digital simulations and technical transparency, the supplier gives their customer a sense of control.
For each criterion, the emotion takes on a positive or negative polarity. By combining all these parameters, we can draw up the following overview of emotions:
| Pleasure | Incentive to act | Control | Positive emotions | Negative emotions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Positive | Strong | Strong | Enthusiasm, pride, strategic excitement, strong confidence | Excessive arrogance, risky overexcitement |
| Positive | Weak | Strong | Serenity, satisfaction, assurance, security | Complacency, strategic inertia |
| Positive | Strong | Weak | Dynamic relief, motivating hope | Emotional dependence, anxious anticipation |
| Negative | Strong | Weak | – | Fear, anxiety, decision-making stress |
| Negative | Strong | Strong | Constructive anger (mobilisation) | Aggressiveness, confrontation |
| Negative | Weak | Strong | Cautious vigilance | Distrust, cynicism |
| Negative | Weak | Weak | – | Discouragement, resignation, disengagement |
This classification allows to craft emotional strategies, like:
- ‘Risk reduction’ strategy: get the customer out of inaction and increase their sense of control. This is used by cybersecurity and insurance service providers.
- ‘Innovation’ strategy: energise the customer and give them a sense of control and mastery. This strategy is relevant for Deeptech start-ups or providers of innovative technological solutions.
- ‘Relational’ strategy: increase enjoyment and provide a sense of security. This is often found among business service providers (catering, IT, maintenance etc.) when contracts are multi-year.
An emotion can be individual or collective, personal or professional
Emotion unfolds in different spheres:
- Personal emotions are at play when we appeal to a person’s individual tastes, values, culture, relationship with brands, experience and network of relationships. Used tactfully and in accordance with cultural codes and customs, this lever is a must-have for establishing a human connection and making a positive first impression.
- Professional emotions: we classify here the interlocutor’s feeling that they can take action, their professional status, their recognition within their company for their work and skills, their ambitions, their acquisition of new skills, the pleasure of discovering a solution, and the pride of having solved a company’s problem.
- Experiential emotions: they are felt throughout a series of moments designed to give the customer a positive and lasting impression of the supplier: this could be a complaint handled efficiently and constructively, a factory visit, or a stay in a luxury hotel from the car park arrival to breakfast the next morning. To create a memorable experience, a great deal of work goes into staging the event, with several different functions coordinating their efforts and dealing with the unexpected, all in the name of customer delight.
- Collective emotions: they celebrate togetherness, belonging to a social community. This is a lever to be activated when the customer is proud to belong to their company. It is also useful when the supplier’s and customer’s teams collaborate closely. It is important to celebrate the team’s successes, the challenges overcome together, and to foster the desire to move forward together. These milestones cement lasting partnerships.
How can emotions make the customer’s decision tip in your favour?
First, avoid excess:
- Communication that is purely informative, with descriptive presentations, technical specifications that don’t mention the user’s context and needs, or presentations focused on the solution itself, but not on the relationship between the user and that solution. It is also worth avoiding any communication whose form and tone don’t evoke the right emotions.
- Content that doesn’t address customer emotions: a best practice here is using customer testimonials. Customers share their needs, initial concerns, questions when faced with challenges, perceived risks, and pleasant surprises.
- The fantasy of a fully automated customer acquisition and relationship process. Automation is economically justifiable, even if it requires significant resources within the company. Yet the best performing CRM alone cannot guarantee a memorable customer experience.
- A gap with the company’s image and values: A company’s image shapes expectations and sets the framework for the customer relationship. An insurance company that emphasizes humanistic values obviously cannot opt for a 100% automated customer relationship process.
- Too much emotion also disrupts the relationship or hinders decision-making: some suppliers constantly play on the fear of missed opportunities or repeatedly trigger the same emotion. The recipient is tired of being manipulated and treated like a prey, not person.
Craft interactions with individuals who are both rational and emotional
The table below illustrates which emotions to trigger at each stage of the sales cycle. This is a starting point that does not take account the specific individuals and groups targeted.
| Step | Event | Event to arouse | Event to avoid |
|---|---|---|---|
| Problem awareness | • Exploratory visit • White paper, publication • Conference presentation • Social media post | Surprise, Curiosity, Strategic interest, Constructive anger | Guilt, Latent anxiety, Fear of falling behind competitors |
| Exploration of solutions | • Information request • Factory/R&D centre visit • Trade show | Hope, Positive outlook | Confusion, Cognitive overload |
| Evaluation and shortlisting | • Request for quotation • Call for tenders • Product demonstration • Performance testing | Trust, Credibility, Progressive mastery | Doubt, Mistrust, Fear of career risk |
| Decision and validation | • Negotiation with economic decision-makers | Assurance, Sense of control | Decision-making stress, Fear of making mistakes |
| Implementation | • Collaboration launch • Initial customer training • Complaint handling • Emergency intervention | Relief, collaboration, Internal buy-in | Frustration, Internal resistance |
| Customer retention and expansion | • End-of-project review | Satisfaction, Pride in the partnership choice, Pride in work team | Disappointment, Abandonment, Feeling of broken promises |
Factoring in emotions into the Marketing and Sales process
- Ensure that the initial situation information is captured without filtering, or distortion. Do marketing studies, information gathered from the CRM, customer meeting minutes, and customer diagnostics report on the emotions experienced by customers and users?
- Based on this diagnostic, what is the brand’s strategy in terms of associated emotional benefits? In the descriptions of the different market segments and marketing personas, are their emotions described?
- The design of the offering will benefit from relying on an understanding of the rational and emotional facets of users, which will inspire designers, ergonomists, and human-computer interface specialists.
- Marketing materials will combine hard facts and emotion: What emotional benefits does the company decide to highlight? How does it justify them? What tone should be adopted? Which media should be chosen to trigger the desired emotion? Does the targeted customer’s purchase and usage journey properly balance “hot” interactions, conducive to the communication of emotions (telephone, face-to-face meeting, webinar) and cold interactions (mailing, website, AI assistant)?
- Customer-facing sales teams: Do they know how to capture and leverage the emotions of their interlocutors? Does their presentation resonate with the customer? “Good salespeople sell features. Great salespeople sell outcomes. And really great salespeople sell feelings.”
A boost in efficiency, without investment
Target audiences are engaged because they feel the sales rep understands their situation. Innovation adoption is accelerated because development has taken into account the market’s emotional needs. Business opportunities are more numerous because the sales rep has uncovered problems they can solve. The price is easy to justify because the product offering addresses emotional needs not written in the specs but crucial for the business decision-maker. Conflicts are resolved smoothly because trust is established. Finally, customer loyalty increases thanks to well-handled “moments of truth” that the customer remembers for a long time.
Operational excellence alone is not enough to meet customers’ emotional needs. It requires significant investments in information systems, technical skills, and processes. Yet these advancements must be conveyed in the customer experience by individuals with the right soft skills to convert them into perceived performance. This last step in not a question of budget.
What if the future were all about bringing great emotions to customers?
Recently I interviewed an industrial equipment buyer about one of his supplier: “It’s old-school industry with the same people for 30 years…” Has the supplier become old hat? Not at all! The customer expresses complete confidence: “…A team with a high level of technical expertise. There aren’t many suppliers like that. We don’t even put them in competition.”
An engineer using SaaS software expresses his feelings of control and reassurance: “We’re truly autonomous with this software; it’s intuitive. And what’s more, if there’s a tricky question, they’re available, which is invaluable.” A company that picks up the phone to its customers is generally perceived as close and efficient. Even more so if its employees, equipped with AI assistants, are quick and relevant in their responses. No, it is not old-fashioned to send handwritten greeting cards. Yes, it is key to meet your customers in person. Yes, it is better to offer your customers the opportunity to contact a human being, instead of directing them to an automated answering system that invites them to complete a contact form on the website.
Geoffroy de Grandmaison
GdeG Consulting