There are many theories about the best tactic for capturing consumer attention. And among them, one stands out in particular — we’re talking about Sensory Marketing, an approach brands use to engage all of the consumer’s senses and deliver a better shopping experience.

But what exactly is Sensory Marketing, and how can a business leverage it to achieve great results? That’s what we’ll explore in today’s article, taking you on a journey through the definition of this type of Marketing, why it matters, what makes it so effective, and how it can be applied to a company’s strategy.

Our goal is to show that Marketing can be very simple, as long as a company can focus on creating unique interactions with its consumers. Sensory Marketing is the main opportunity we have to do that, and it’s all about awakening every one of the senses.

Ready for the journey? Then start reading now!

What is Sensory Marketing?

It’s not very hard to understand what Sensory Marketing means, especially since you’ve probably come across examples of it already. Although the concept is relatively new, dating back to the early 2000s, it has gained ground in the market and is now part of how many brands promote themselves.

Want some examples? You’ve probably walked into a Melissa store and noticed the signature scent of those spaces. Or maybe you’ve heard the music playing on the brand’s radio station and noticed how the store furniture clearly echoes the materials used in its shoes.

All of that is Sensory Marketing in action. The idea is to attract consumers with more than just the traditional visual and auditory strategies. It appeals to all five senses with the goal of creating noticeable differentiators in retail.

After all, we’re surrounded by Marketing initiatives that work more or less the same way. Magazine ads, TV commercials, and radio jingles that invade our lives and lead us, consciously or not, to associate phrases, feelings, and value judgments with brands. However, a relatively recent phenomenon has caught the attention of scientists who study how we absorb all these messages.

Have you ever heard of banner blindness? Banner blindness is what lets us browse page after page on the Internet without ever noticing that we’re surrounded by ads. That’s because our eyes have grown used to them, so they no longer register them as new information that needs to be captured and processed by the brain.

Something fairly similar to banner blindness also happens in real life. We’re so used to traditional advertising and its devices that we manage to tune it out, which is not good news for Marketing professionals. After all, their job is to make sure the products, services, and brands they promote get seen and, as a result, remembered.

So what tool do they have to recapture our attention and make us notice advertising again? Sensory Marketing.

Instead of appealing to just two of our senses, Marketing professionals discovered they could be far more successful by taking all five into account. That’s why touch, smell, and taste came to be seen as a path to selling more.

The reason is easy to understand. Our bodies respond differently to the sensations they experience every day and, subconsciously, treat that information as signs that a brand is trustworthy or innovative.

Think about Apple’s packaging. The fact that every box fits its product perfectly is one of the sensory devices the company uses to tell us that every product was designed down to the smallest detail. You’d have a much worse impression of the iPhone or the MacBook if they came in boxes made of inferior material, or boxes that let the products slide around during shipping.

When a brand chooses to offer a range of sensations to its consumers, it gains room to tell a story and finds less obvious ways to convey the qualities it wants its products to have. That’s how it wins us over emotionally.

That’s why paying attention to the sensory side of Retail Marketing can help you a lot.

Why Sensory Marketing matters

A Marketing strategy has to deliver value to a business in order to be chosen. So we need to show you that Sensory Marketing matters when it comes to driving conversions.

We can do that by raising three points: that the brand experience is more relevant to consumers than the brand’s communication; that the senses can create a stronger emotional connection than words; and that it’s much easier to convince consumers of something by showing it to them.

Let’s briefly address each one. The first is described in the book The Meaningful Brand, by Nigel Hollis. In it, the author argues that the experience we have when interacting with a brand defines every association we’ll make with it in the future. In other words, by confirming or contradicting a given impression through experiences, we decide, once and for all, what’s true about a business.

So if your company says it’s modern but packages all of its products in a way that doesn’t reflect that, your consumer will feel they’ve been lied to. And that will make them trust your business less. It doesn’t matter how many times a message is repeated — if it isn’t conveyed at other touchpoints, your brand may end up stripping it of all meaning.

The second point looks at how important our senses are in how we interact with our surroundings. We are, after all, guided by them all the time and, at times, even fooled by them. That’s what magic tricks and optical illusions are for.

Those last two work for a very simple reason. We’re emotionally connected to what our senses tell us. That’s why, if we didn’t see something happen, we probably won’t believe it right away when we hear it described.

Most of the sensations we experience are processed without any input from our conscious mind. That means we associate smells with people and temperatures with memories. When your brand does a good job of engaging all five senses, it benefits from an unbreakable bond with the consumer.

Finally, we need to use the senses to build metaphors so that a brand’s values can come across effectively. Remember the Apple example from the previous section.

If you want to associate a brand with cleanliness, you’ll choose white as the dominant color in its communication. Because there’s no better way to convey values than through experience.

It’s not hard to see why Sensory Marketing matters. It puts everything your brand stands for, or wants to stand for, into the way it interacts with consumers. And for that very reason, it can create more meaningful emotional connections while being more effective than a slogan.

The pillars of Sensory Marketing

What, though, makes Sensory Marketing actually work? A few pillars define how we absorb these initiatives and why they tend to succeed. We’re talking especially about how the senses are richer than language and how sensory processing accounts for a large share of what our brain does every day.

At the same time, we’re also referring to two other characteristics of Sensory Marketing: the fact that the senses have a major impact on how we behave, and the notion that better shopping experiences make consumers come back to your store.

Words and sensations

The senses influence the way we perceive the world more easily than language does, and that isn’t very hard to understand.

After all, we learn languages, and although human beings show an innate ability to communicate, we can’t learn them on our own without someone actively teaching us. Words mean specific things, and those things are taught to us very early in life.

We learn that each color has a name, and that the objects around us do too. But what we don’t learn are the sensations associated with, say, seeing a yellow bicycle.

Consider that, in language, we have about 10 or 11 words to name the colors that exist. In the perceptual world, however, we can distinguish millions of yellow bicycles in different shades. This means we are influenced differently by these two aspects — words and sensations.

Perception machines

Another pillar of Sensory Marketing is that our brains are gigantic perception machines. They work all the time, absorbing the context around us, and they’ve been doing so ever since Homo sapiens evolved.

Surviving in the forest was never an easy task, and to do it, our ancestors had to understand the importance of paying attention to everything. Sounds, smells, touch, what we see and what we taste. It’s no coincidence that the brain is the part of the human body that consumes the most energy.

Our sensory apparatus sets us apart and makes us so adaptable. Using it to convey messages is an obvious way to reach certain goals faster.

External context and behavior

Because our brains have so much influence on how we lead our lives, and because they rely so heavily on the senses, we can assume our behavior does too. The impact of sight and sound is already used every day by your Marketing department, so it’s only natural to explore the other three senses as well.

Have you ever noticed how hard it is to concentrate when a smell bothers us? Likewise, when we suppress one sense, we feel as though the others have become sharper. We’re constantly influenced by what’s going on around us, and failing to take advantage of that to promote products and services is a terrible idea.

Shopping experience

Finally, we’re not talking about some retail innovation or a concept that’s completely foreign to you. We all know that the better the shopping experiences we have when interacting with brands, the greater the chances we’ll want to repeat them.

This principle, which guides our loyalty efforts, is also one of the pillars of Sensory Marketing. An experience, after all, is the sum of the sensations we pile up as we go through something. And all of those sensations are, obviously, influenced by our senses.

Advantages of Sensory Marketing

For all the reasons above, Sensory Marketing makes sense. Now take a look at some of the advantages it can bring to your business.

Create the ideal atmosphere for shopping

Using smell in Sensory Marketing is the main resource a company has to create a unique atmosphere. It’s the sense most commonly associated with memory and, because of that, the one with the greatest power to influence us positively toward a brand.

If your store has a signature scent, consumers will remember it forever. And adding that scent to packaging can make them want to visit again.

Humanize spaces with music

Sounds, and especially music, are one of the simplest ways to bring out customers’ emotions. That’s why brands invest in their own radio stations and make a point of choosing the perfect soundtrack for the shopping experience. The more engaged your consumer is in the moment, the greater the chances they’ll buy and completely forget about the world outside.

Reinforce your identity with images

Promotional images are a widely used resource for attracting customers. Banners, billboards and magazine ads are examples. But what if we told you they can be used inside your store to reinforce your brand?

We absorb a lot of information visually, and using tools such as dynamic displays is an inexpensive way to ensure a more complete shopping experience. They help customers immerse themselves in a brand’s universe and, as a result, feel like part of it.

How to use Sensory Marketing in retail

Retail has many opportunities to use Sensory Marketing to create more meaningful experiences and win over consumers. Here are some examples of what a business can do to succeed with this strategy.

Make an emotional appeal

The closer a brand can get to our fears and desires, the easier it is to convince us we need its products. Because of that, the first step you should take toward Sensory Marketing is understanding what captivates your consumers emotionally.

The biggest mistake a brand can make is trying to reach just one of a visitor’s senses. But another big “slip-up” is trying to reach the wrong senses. With research and business intelligence, it’s possible to better understand consumers and determine exactly what kind of efforts could influence them positively.

Get to know other brands’ initiatives

In the United States, one of the biggest donut sellers is Dunkin Donuts. However, that wasn’t exactly the market where the company chose to test its first Sensory Marketing approach. In South Korea, Dunkin ran an experiment: filling malls with the constant smell of freshly brewed coffee every time its jingle played.

If people nearby already intended to buy donuts, that intention grew, since the two — the drink and the food — have a very strong association. Initiatives like these can be seen across many sectors and come from countless companies around the world. To create an effective Sensory Marketing strategy, researching them will help you develop on-target ideas.

Remember touch

Touch will probably be one of the hardest senses to stimulate. It may be a good idea, then, to start your efforts with it. Texture can be explored in the products a brand sells, in the quality of its packaging materials and even at the POS.

The 5 senses of Sensory Marketing

Want to get to know the five senses that make up Sensory Marketing better? See below the role each of them plays in converting customers in retail.

Smell

Smell is the sense brands stimulate the most. In our examples, it was present both in the shoe store and in the donut brand. But you can see it stimulated in all kinds of contexts.

Supermarkets are among the types of retailers that do this the most. They usually have a signature scent shared by every store in the chain. Try to notice it the next time you go shopping.

Sight

Consumers easily recognize color schemes and logos. However, there are other ways to use sight to engage them.

Reunion Tower, in Dallas (Texas), offers visitors a 360-degree view. To stimulate this sense, you can get the same experience by downloading its app.

Touch

There’s nothing like holding a product to grow attached to it. Retailers, however, don’t always deal with their own products and can benefit from this sense by investing in packaging and fixtures capable of conveying a concept.

Taste

Stimulating the sense of taste doesn’t have to keep you up at night. Some stores, like Camiseteria, ship their products with a piece of candy made exclusively for the brand. This small giveaway makes people a little more eager to receive their orders, or pleasantly surprised when they open a package.

Hearing

Jingles and slogans are examples of how sound can influence us. And how do we come into contact with it at other times? Thousands of department stores create their own radio stations, with songs that evoke positive feelings and match their target audience’s taste.

But music isn’t the only way to stimulate the ears. Some sounds, on their own, are enough to make a consumer feel stimulated. They have the benefit of being less intrusive.

Sensory Marketing Tips

Still need some tips on how to do Sensory Marketing the right way in your store? Here’s what you need to keep in mind for the technique to work:

• start slowly, since surprising your customers with scents, textures and the sound of the radio overnight won’t always deliver positive results;
• create a system that makes your business recognizable and, if you have more than one store, remember to have them all stimulate the senses in the same way;
• choose product names that evoke feelings — they’re part of a rich sensory experience;
• don’t do the same as your competitors; to stand out, you need to offer the consumer something unique;
• make sure your Sensory Marketing is aligned with your other strategies;
• create experiences around the senses you’re engaging; and
• never disregard your customers’ response — that’s what will indicate whether the strategy succeeds or fails.

Sensory Marketing may be a new term for you, but it has been part of the way brands interact with their customers for quite some time. Stemming from Sensory Branding, a concept defined around 2002, it’s based on the fact that there’s much more to explore when interacting with a customer than the traditional senses of sight and hearing.

Even though most brand promotion strategies are based on these two senses, there’s no reason for your company to be limited to them. Offering consumers a sensory experience that includes the other three senses can help them remember what you sell more easily. And, as a result, turn them into loyal customers.

Many brands today already use Sensory Marketing to become more memorable. How about starting to do the same in your business? Subscribe to the AliceWonders newsletter and discover other news that can help your company stand out!