As a research psychologist and tech journalist, I’m convinced that the most effective kind of website marketing is subconscious branding, where blatant marketing isn’t prominent and serves to build brand trust.
How do we achieve that?
Through emotional cues integrated into website content and design that resonate with readers’ deepest interests.
Before the advent of generative Artificial Intelligence (genAI), achieving this kind of website marketing was more challenging. In the past, small business owners had to rely on tools like online surveys to gauge the opinions of their target market. They had to learn how to infuse their writing with emotional content, and either hire talented teams or teach themselves psychology-driven website design, graphics, and video production.
Now, generative AI helps entrepreneurs perform these tasks more effectively. In this guide, I’ll cover why emotionally driven marketing matters, how you can apply that concept to your product descriptions, and the tools I recommend when using AI to craft winning product descriptions.
The psychology behind emotional commerce
A century ago, marketing was straightforward. Companies would say, "Here’s my product, here’s how much it costs," and maybe add, "Here’s how it’s different from the competition." The legendary Sears catalog, for example, featured just black-and-white illustrations with simple product descriptions and prices. There were no marketing strategies, copywriting techniques, lifestyle shots, or emotional storytelling.
It was Freud’s nephew, Edward Bernays, who connected advertising to people’s deepest unconscious desires and fears, understanding that most times people bought not because they had to but were impelled by emotions such as guilt or the desire to fit in.
Neuroscience reveals that 95% of consumer decisions are subconscious, with at least 70% of purchase decisions driven by emotion rather than logic. Researchers like Joseph LeDoux show that emotional responses occur first, followed by the logical reasoning of the brain’s prefrontal cortex (PFC), which aligns with our emotions.
To get people to buy, we should incorporate statistics and facts into our website design, but the main drivers should be emotional appeal.
Case studies regarding emotion-driven product descriptions
To demonstrate the impact of emotionally connecting with customers, let’s look at how two businesses have effectively used this strategy in their product descriptions and branding.
Graza
Rather than the typical olive oil used for traditional Italian recipes, Graza shows that its olive oil is a cool and essential part of everyday cooking through brand strategies that include:
- Engaging content: Relatable stories and recipes that showcase the versatility of the product.
- Design and colors: Bright, inviting colors and a modern layout that evoke excitement and energy in the kitchen.
- Testimonials: Real customer experiences that highlight how Graza enhances their cooking adventures, fostering a sense of community and connection.
These elements work together to create an emotional bond with potential buyers, making cooking feel fun and accessible.
Liquid Death
Liquid Death is bottled water designed for consumers who feel alienated by traditional water brands. To inspire purchases, Liquid Death makes water edgy by:
- Embracing meme culture: The brand leans into humor and internet memes, making their messaging relatable and shareable among younger audiences.
- Bold branding: The product description is striking and rebellious, transforming a mundane product into something that feels cool and countercultural.
- Playful language: The use of tongue-in-cheek language and slogans creates an entertaining experience that resonates with consumers seeking authenticity.
By tapping into these elements, Liquid Death effectively engages its audience and turns drinking water into a fun, subversive experience.
Today, AI tools like GoDaddy Airo® allow business owners to create high-quality, emotionally intelligent content quickly and effectively — something that was once largely the domain of well-resourced agencies.
Using AI to create product descriptions
Generative AI works through databases that draw on vast amounts of information from across the web, including blogs and social media. For text generation, generative AI tools like ChatGPT and Gemini help users generate resonant narratives for storylines, social posts, and advertisements. They can also generate headlines, product descriptions, and calls-to-action that tap into emotional triggers like trust, urgency, or joy.
Here are my go-to choices for creating emotion-driven narratives and captions for client websites and blogs.
Top generative AI tools for writing product descriptions
- GoDaddy Online Store: Helps craft an appealing product description in seconds.
- ChatGPT: Excellent for crafting emotionally compelling and personalized content.
- Gemini: Scientific and current; ideal for data-driven platforms.
- Poe: Excels at making data-driven writing more informal.
- Claude: A strong alternative to ChatGPT.
Top generative AI tools for captions, ads, and social posts
- ChatGPT: Versatile and conversational, great for various content types.
- Claude: Is less casual, making it suitable for more formal contexts.
- Rytr: Aims to sound like the business owner. Use cases include brand name generation, writing ideas, calls to action, and blog outlines.
- Writesonic: Does everything that ChatGPT and other tools do, differentiating itself with SEO-driven content.
Choosing the right tool for branding
When selecting an AI tool for business website content with emotional branding in mind, consider these factors:
- Content volume and type: Are you writing short ad copy, product descriptions, or long-form brand stories?
- Budget: Free plans and lower-cost options are great for experimenting, but professional tools often come with a higher price tag.
- Human oversight: Regardless of the tool, human review and editing are crucial for truly effective emotional branding.
- Brand archetypes/storytelling: Select tools that let you input your brand's archetype or core story to help the AI generate content that aligns with your desired emotional impact.
For genuinely strong branding, a combination of tools might be most effective. I recommend a general-purpose LLM for brainstorming and nuanced drafting, a dedicated text generation tool for scaling specific content types, and an SEO tool to ensure discoverability.
Practical strategies for emotion-driven marketing
Traditional advice recommends identifying your audience’s pain points and desires, then building emotionally resonant narratives around them.
Personally, I find it simpler and more effective to start with the "Money Idea" of Henry Daubrez, followed by the 4 Es framework and sometimes testing results using Alex Cattoni’s 5 Core Emotions of the Emotional Buyer’s Journey to ensure all major emotional touchpoints are covered.
The Money Idea
CEO and Creative Director of Dogstudio, Henry Daubrez simplifies website branding into a strong, singular idea that fosters emotional connections and maximizes impact. For example, with Graza, the goal is to make olive oil approachable for the masses. Its emotions could include accessibility, inclusion, ease, simplicity. For Liquid Death, it's to turn life-giving water into a death symbol. Its emotions pivot around irony, edginess, rebellion.
4E’s of the experience economy
Different businesses require different emotional strategies. When designing client websites, I use the 4 Es framework, developed by B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore, to identify and align their emotional impact. The framework helps position websites across four types of customer experience:
- Entertainment: This includes intangible products that offer an entertainment experience. For example, Liquid Death could approach their branding from an entertainment angle.
- Education: This realm encompasses educational workshops and programs designed to inform and educate consumers.
- Escape: Here, buyers can detach from their daily routines and enter an alternative reality. Businesses in the travel and hospitality sectors exemplify this experience.
- Aesthetic: This category includes products and niches like art, design, and fashion, focusing on the visual appeal of the offerings.
Finally, I compare my emotional branding results with the Emotional Buyer’s Journey to assess their effectiveness.
5 core emotions of “The Emotional Buyers Journey”
According to marketing educator and copywriter Alex Cattoni, customers need to feel:
- Understood. Buyers need to feel you understand their pain, frustration, or confusion and that you are there to help them. Graza drafts very simple meals for “your friends”.
- Safe. Customers want to feel confident that you will deliver on your promises and help them overcome obstacles. Liquid Death posts its water quality report.
- Empowered. Your audience needs to believe they can achieve the desired transformation or outcome with your product. Graza posts testimonials.
- Excited. Creating excitement makes customers more likely to make quick decisions. Liquid Death showcases events, horror shows, and a Murder Head Death Club.
- Committed. Urgency could be generated through limited-time offers, bonuses, or price increases that can drive commitment. Both Graza and Liquid Death have their own distinct brand incentives.
To apply this concept to creating content that resonates, brainstorm your big idea and identify core emotions to drive your strategy. Then, generate prompts for AI, review its output for errors, incorporate human feedback, and test results before launching to ensure audience resonance.
Getting started: Your action plan
- Focus on these three questions:
- How do you want your audience to feel when they buy from you?
- How do they want to feel?
- What is their core desire?
- Define your brand's emotional archetype: Before using any tool, clearly define the emotions you want your website to evoke. Do you want to convey trust, excitement, comfort, innovation, or something else? This will guide your generative AI prompts.
- Use a layered prompting approach: Start with broad concepts and then refine with more specific emotional and stylistic cues.
- Human oversight is crucial: Always review and refine the AI-generated content to ensure it truly aligns with your brand's emotional goals.
- A/B test everything: Use tools like Helpfull or built-in A/B testing features in your personalization platforms to test different emotional appeals in your content.
- Focus on consistency: Ensure the emotional tone is consistent across all elements of your website – from the copy and imagery to the user interface and chatbot interactions.
- Ethical considerations: Be mindful of privacy and data security when using AI, especially when dealing with sentiment analysis or personalization based on user data. Ensure transparency with your audience.
By adopting these emotion-driven strategies and harnessing the powerful capabilities of generative AI tools, business owners can turn their product descriptions into captivating narratives that deeply connect with customers, leading to increased engagement and sales.
Disclaimer: When using AI tools, avoid entering sensitive information and always review output for accuracy. Additionally, this content is for demonstration purposes only; it does not represent any affiliation, endorsement, or sponsorship with ChatGPT or Open AI. All trademark rights belong to their respective owners. Third-party trademarks are used here for demonstrative and educational purposes only; use does not represent affiliation.
