Clever use of the sense of smell is a communication strategy that yields amazing results. Those who opt for olfactory marketing as a vehicle for telling their brand story know how involving all five senses is essential in order to create irrational breaches in the client’s mind and shape their moods and purchase intentions.
Scent marketing falls into the broader category of sensory marketing – a set of tactics that, rather than appealing to conscious thought, explore the streets of that territory full of charm that we know as the unconscious. Using olfactory marketing techniques involves the conscious fragrancing of places such as retail stores, residential locations, hotels, shopping centres, offices or bars and restaurants so that they become the perfect environment for each customer, making purchases and return visits more likely.
Accurate olfactory design is one of the most effective tools for attracting and persuading: but where does the power of perfume come from and what benefits can scent marketing actually offer you?
Five senses, endless access doors to the mind
Our sense of smell is among our most primitive systems of perception and has a direct influence on our emotional state. Smelling a perfume directly stimulates our limbic system, the area of the brain responsible for managing not only our sense of smell, but also our emotional reactions, long-term memory and behaviours. Connected with the autonomic nervous system and the endocrine system, this brain area still processes smells and perfumes today, considering them a fundamental vehicle for knowing the outside world and choosing adequate responses to deal with it.
From a mere pleasure-danger indicator, our sense of smell has also evolved, becoming an almost infinite source of memories and emotional nuances. Among its most interesting functions is the ability to build – through a mechanism called associative learning – a stable connection between a particular smell and the event, person, object or environment which gave rise to it.
The complex set of sensations recorded by the mind at that precise moment imprints a long-term memory which can be recalled via the right sensory incentives and thus unleash incredibly intense moods and emotions. The potential of smell for marketing strategies that aim to create immersive experiences for the client is thus clear, creating decisive advantages for the brand that chooses to put it into practice.
Offer the irrational, achieve concrete results
The most recent findings in neuromarketing show that the limbic brain is activated intensively during purchase phases and that about 2/3 of consumer choices are linked to sensory stimuli, rather than rational evaluations such as utility or cost-benefit. The mind’s enhanced sensitivity to perceptual stimuli is therefore a condition to be exploited to the maximum in order to influence client experience in your brand’s spaces and build relationships of pleasure, confidence, positivity and well-being with them.
Create evocative environments, entice purchases
As mentioned, the sense of smell can, almost instantly, prompt pleasant memories of the past – infusing mind and body with deep feelings of comfort, happiness or satisfaction.
These are the reasons why, thanks to olfactory marketing, you can perform your own small subliminal spells and induce precise emotional states in the customers who visit your store, SPA, hotel or restaurant. Indeed, just a hint of perfume is enough to generate pleasant unconscious sensations and put your customers in a mood conducive to purchasing.
Starbucks or Cinnabon for example entice customers to consume thanks to notes of roasted beans or cinnamon. Obviously the concept does not only apply to the food sector: a study in Sweden showed how the release of pleasant fragrances in a shampoo store increased sales by 27%, while a huge player in the market in the form of Nike has observed that the diffusion of a pleasant scent within its stores can increase customer purchase intentions by 80% .
A warm welcome and a longer stay
The positive emotions prompted by perfumes also act as an excellent incentive to enter a store and stay for longer. An inviting fragrance diffused carefully near a point of sale can increase the number of customers who decide to cross the threshold by more than 70%. A carefully chosen perfume can also retain customers in commercial spaces for longer, increasing the time spent in store by up to 40% and, consequently, increasing the probability of purchase and the value of the average receipt.
The same happens in Stores, which are used to filling the air with the most evocative fragrances, in line with the season and commercial objectives, so as to make time spent in the store a truly multi-sensory experience to be prolonged as much as possible.
Activate the perceptions you want
Perfume has the ability to arouse emotions, moods and memories. A specially designed fragrance can energise, relax, stimulate productivity, promote conviviality or act as a balm for the spirit. Those involved in olfactory marketing are highly aware of this ability: indeed, client mood can be conditioned via simple, but extremely powerful, drops of fragrance.
Special olfactory notes, carefully elaborated, are sufficient to make an environment appear more – or less – formal and prestigious, or ensure its staff appear competent, available or proactive. As demonstrated by Thomas Pink in London, a fragrance can also promote the perception of quality of the products offered in-store. Perfume’s powers of persuasion can also calm patients in medical surgeries or incite colleagues to work more enthusiastically in offices and departments.
Experiment with olfactory branding
A step beyond sensory marketing is the choice of a personalised olfactory logo, or a signature composed of specific fragrance notes in harmony with your brand and its philosophy which contributes to the creation of a unique and immediately recognisable storytelling. In fact, telling an emotional story is an unbeatable strategy to get closer to the mind, but above all to the heart of your potential customers.
Be remembered and build loyalty
The personalised fragrance will create a lasting bond with your customers, creating positive connections and conquering an indelible space in the minds of those who have experienced it. Your brand will be recognisable not only at a rational level, but on a new unconscious level: when they next enter into contact with your fragrance, consumers will be immediately catapulted into that same environment and will find themselves experiencing a memory that has now become indelible.
The memory of your brand will become unintentional and unstoppable, with enormous benefits in terms of perception, brand awareness, and ability to create connections between your brand and its specific products and services, environments and people. An exciting brand experience will be a great incentive for your customers to return: they will want to repeat this experience, thus increasing brand loyalty, and they will want to talk about it, thereby triggering word of mouth processes.
Strengthen brand identity with visceral bonds
Playing with the creation of exclusive fragrances for your brand allows you to create empathic connections with your customers, who will feel closer to your brand, more involved in its atmospheres and more in tune with its values. Thanks to olfactory branding, you will thus have a faster and more direct channel for conveying your messages, but also – in a fruitful two-way relationship – for listening and understanding your audience and learning what prompts the most evocative emotions in your customers.
A means to explore, to reach a level of contact never experienced before. Find out now how to use the intoxicating power of perfume, book a consultation with one of our Scent Experts!
