The differences between scent marketing and traditional marketing are numerous. Even though scent marketing achieves the same outcome of convincing people to patronise your product or service, the key difference with scent marketing is that it works on a more profound subconscious level than the traditional visual and audio marketing strategies.
Let’s take a look at these two distinct approaches to influencing consumer behaviour so that we can see the benefits of scent marketing and how it can amplify traditional marketing strategies.
Similarities
One of the main similarities between traditional marketing and scent marketing is that both strategies aim to influence consumer behaviour by playing on perceptions and emotions. With all marketing approaches, the aim is to create a connection between the brand and the target audience through a variety of stimuli that can evoke feelings and positive associations with the brand in the consumer’s mind.
Brand recognition is another key goal of scent marketing, particularly when it comes to using bespoke scents that are directly associated with one particular brand. The aim of marketing with a scent or otherwise is to build brand recognition and encourage brand recall to make a brand more memorable and recognisable for consumers.
Both traditional marketing and scent marketing aim to evoke emotions in customers. Whereas traditional marketing uses audio and visual stimuli, scent marketing focuses solely on olfactory stimuli to trigger emotional responses. The way the olfactory system responds to stimuli has a different impact on the brain than visual or audio stimuli, but the end result is the same. Although arguably, scent marketing has a more powerful response.
Differences
Critically, the difference between olfactory marketing and traditional marketing strategies is that olfactory branding strategies focus on one’s sense of smell. Traditional marketing relies predominantly on visual and audio elements such as text, video, audio, and images. By contrast, scent marketing aims only to stimulate the olfactory system to create brand and product associations in the consumer’s mind.
While visual and audio marketing can be communicated across a number of mediums remotely, such as television, billboards, and magazine advertisements, scent marketing requires that the consumer be physically present in the space to experience it. This creates a more immersive and memorable experience, although it is generally limited to being in the physical proximity of a scent diffusion device.
Another key difference between traditional marketing and scent marketing is that scent is more closely linked to memories and associations. This is due to the way the olfactory system connects with the brain, which can trigger vivid memories and more powerful emotional responses than other types of marketing strategies. The brand recall and emotional connection made through scent marketing are therefore more powerful compared to traditional marketing.
Also important to consider is that scent marketing tends to be more novel due to its relative rarity. This can arouse consumers’ attention and curiosity more effectively than traditional marketing, which faces a significant amount of competition wherever you see or hear it.
Generally speaking, traditional marketing is easier to measure in terms of its success owing to the tangible and measurable metrics that it allows for. These might include things such as clicks, views, conversions, and engagement rates. On the other hand, scent marketing’s impact on consumer behaviour can be a little more difficult to quantify and typically needs to be assessed using things such as surveys to elicit some kind of quantitative measurement for analysis.
If you are interested in using scent marketing to amplify your marketing strategy, contact us at Scent.ology today. We have a wide range of scent diffusion devices available, along with a variety of scents that you can use to make your brand stand out.
