Olfactory branding or scent marketing is a powerful tool for influencing the hearts and minds of customers who interact with your brand. Through the correct combinations of aromas and appropriate diffusion technologies, scent marketing can become an indispensable and effective part of your overall marketing strategy.
Our sense of smell is much more powerful at creating strong memories and emotions associated with experiences than any other sense. Smell ‒ more so than sight, sound, taste or touch ‒ can be used to influence involuntary reactions and to subconsciously guide opinions because of the way that it is connected to the brain.
Smell And The Brain
The olfactory system is linked directly to the brain’s limbic system, which incorporates the amygdala and the hippocampus, where memories and emotions are formed and stored. Our sense of smell is thus directly linked to emotions and memories in ways that our other senses are not.
Therefore, an aroma can be a powerful way of stimulating recollection. Memories involve the brain recalling experiences through all of the senses. We often erroneously only associate memory with sight and sound, but smell has a far more powerful connection to memory. It is for this reason that emotions will naturally be strongly linked to aromas.
The Link Between Smell And Emotion
Certain smells are more likely to evoke positive emotions, while some odours cause negative ones. Good smells are the kinds of scents that reduce anxiety, increase vigour and generally help to improve mood.
For this reason, scent marketing is powerful because it can provide these aromas through expert formulation and careful consideration of the brand and its intentions. When done correctly, it can lead to improved emotional associations with the brand among customers and even staff as well.
Comfort
One of the things scent marketers aim for is to create a sense of comfort in the minds of customers, as this will increase longer time and boost the likelihood of a sale. Scent marketing can help reduce anxiety and make customers feel soothed. It can foster a subconscious feeling of being at home. Scent marketing can create a sense of familiarity that will increase the likelihood of your customers recalling your brand, as well as their experiences with your brand, in a positive light.
The impact that this can have on customer retention and loyalty is significant, as is the reverse. If your customers develop negative associations with your brand owing to foul odours, this can have a damaging impact on your ability to retain customers.
Foul smells are always associated with negative emotions, so ensuring that foul odours are eliminated while fostering improved smells to create a better emotional impact will dramatically improve the brand association.
Our sense of smell tells us if we are in danger, if something is dirty or clean, and if food is safe or good to eat. Our sense of smell reminds us of our mother’s cooking during childhood or the first apartment we moved into as an adult. Our sense of smell can create powerful effects on the psyche by vividly recalling sensory details of memories, the emotional impact of which is profound.
It would be folly not to take control of this excellent marketing resource.
To maximise the impact of scent marketing on your customers and to boost the positive emotional association people have with your brand, contact us at Scent.ology today! We have an array of scents and diffusion devices and expert advice to offer.
