Scent marketing
The smell. Isn’t it amazing how a hint of invisible odor molecules is able to transport you straight back to a childhood visit to your grandparents? Or how the delicious aroma of freshly baked bread seems to lure you to that little bakery on the corner? And everyone recognizes that typical smell emanating from a new car.
Yes, smell is perhaps the oldest and most automatic way humans make sense of the world. Needless to say, our sense of smell has captured the attention of psychologists, neuroscientists and marketing researchers for at least three decades.
But scent marketing research is far from easy, no matter how delightful it may sound. To discover how smells influence our thoughts, emotions and behaviors, we need rigorous and carefully crafted scientific research, and lots of it.
Scent can make a difference in marketing, often in unexpected ways. So let’s take a deep breath and delve into the following post, where we collect the highlights of scent marketing and how we can choose the scenting of our point of sale.
How does odor influence the choice?
Many “traditional” marketers still regard scent marketing as a fad, despite all the evidence to the contrary. When it comes to consumer behavior, scents can make a night and day difference.
In general, a pleasant smell tickles the brain’s approach system, which in turn triggers a wide range of approach behaviors. As a result, pleasant smells attract more people to a store, cause them to spend more time in a store, encourage them to try and buy more different products, and cause them to spend more money, especially through impulse buying.
How does smell influence thoughts and emotions during shopping?
A pleasant smell makes people feel better, no wonder.
It has been proven that smell is the most emotional of all the senses. Pleasant smells make us feel better, which is directly transferred to product evaluation. Of course, odors that are considered less pleasant have a strong negative impact on people’s emotional state.
This raises the question of what makes an odor pleasant or unpleasant. In large part, this is determined by its intensity. Neutral odors become more unpleasant as their intensity increases. Therefore, in fairly neutral commercial environments, such as offices and hardware stores, it is best to minimize odor. However, inherently pleasant odors (chocolate, fresh bread) are different: each exhibits a sweet spot of optimum intensity. As soon as this sweet spot is exceeded, even the most inherently pleasant odor becomes repellent.
Surprisingly, smells not only change the way people feel, but even powerfully influence what they think and how they process information. A pleasant smell seems to flip a switch in the brain that shifts attention to the positive aspects of the environment and blinds it to the negative. The whole experience changes. A pleasant smell can transform an ordinary denim store into a premium boutique with superior fabrics, better service, more affordable prices…and, hey, even the clerks seem more attractive. Scent is not simply an after touch to spruce up the store environment, it reshapes the entire customer experience.
In addition, scents can facilitate attention and product processing, further increasing sales. For this to occur, it is vital that the scent is not only pleasant, but also congruent with the shopping environment. While the aroma of a freshly baked Italian pizzeria may be pleasant, it certainly won’t facilitate deeper processing of a neighboring high-tech store due to the lack of congruency. If you want to benefit from the attention-enhancing and processing-enhancing effects of scent, it’s best to look for pleasantness near your product.
How does smell influence memory?
We all know what it feels like when a scent automatically triggers a deeply buried memory of a previous life episode, a place or a product. Especially when it comes to the latter, there are many techniques that scent marketers can employ to engage the consumer’s mind.
Scent acts as a kind of brain glue that associatively binds all thoughts and experiences related to a brand. A simple everyday example: the joy of a wonderful dinner at a restaurant is more likely to make you revisit it two years later when the place gives off the same aroma on both occasions. Scent makes it effortless to recall past memories. The same is true for physical products: each positive (or negative) experience when unpacking Apple products adds up to the same chain of memories, as each product has the same brand scent. Smart marketers can take this principle a step further by aligning multiple marketing channels with a consistent scent. By enhancing store, packaging and even print ads with a unique brand scent, a seamless sensory experience is created where positive brand associations can come to mind easily.
What if your marketing channels don’t smell?
In the age of the Internet, the number of consumer touch points with your brand that allow for scent is decreasing. Does this mean that the science of scent marketing is dying a premature death?
It doesn’t feel like it. Recent research has found that “sniffing,” that is, asking someone to imagine the smell of the product, can be the same for the brain as the experience of actual smells. In the case of delicious food, smelling beforehand led to physically greater salivation, greater desire to eat and, ultimately, greater food consumption.
When all the weapons you have at your disposal are text and images, it is effective to indirectly try to get people to think about the smell of the product. Encourage people to vividly imagine what the smell or taste of the product is like. In the case of food, beverages, perfumes and detergents, it is natural to describe how the product smells. But in the case of technology and fashion, although they have a powerful olfactory component, it would be frankly strange to describe the smell of the product in depth. These product categories call for clever writing and art direction, as well as a certain psychological dexterity, to make them work. But the indirect ways of doing so are numerous. In the case of a TV ad, a very brief close-up of someone’s nose, naturally embedded in the visual storyline of the ad, can be enough to activate the brain’s smell department.
Does smell influence behavior?
For a long time, scientists were divided on the question of whether people’s awareness of odor was important. On the one hand, some studies found that people were only influenced by environmental odor when they did not consciously perceive it. On the other hand, other studies showed that odor influenced choice and behavior regardless of whether people noticed it.
After analyzing 30 different studies with various settings and experimental designs. It seems that awareness of the odor itself need not be a bad thing (or even a good thing), but awareness of the underlying persuasive intent is. Because when people sense that someone is trying to influence their actions, they resort to harsh defensive mechanisms. Therefore, try not to set off people’s persuasion alarms by hiding your scent mouthpieces in plain sight, or by using scent tactics that have become well known to the general public. Otherwise, people will mentally close their wallets and leave the store, and sometimes literally.
Aromatization of spaces
What is the most suitable fragrance to scent your space or shipment?
Whether you want to find the perfect fragrance for your business or electronic order shipments, be it a store, an office, a hotel or a restaurant, the controlled use of scents will allow you to influence the perception of your customers, incentivize your employees, lengthen dwell time and encourage purchases.
Fragrances for stores and hotels
The fragrance you choose should be consistent with the products or services you offer.
Thus, in a coffee shop, aromas that enhance the smell of products such as coffee, chocolate or cinnamon are used, while in a shoe store, store scents with leather, sandalwood, cedar and other essences are used.
To choose the most recommended fragrance in each case, you must take into account the type of public that visits your business: executives, ladies, children, families, young people, athletes, patients or students.
The diffusers for companies can generate very different sensations such as glamour, freshness, relaxation, cleanliness, luxury, hunger, pleasant memories, femininity, masculinity, or mystery, among many others, it is important to correctly choose the odotype by population segment to which it is applied since a certain aromatization will be assigned.
Appropriate choice of fragrance
Studies show that businesses that use the services of an olfactory marketing consultancy increase their turnover by 25%.
By choosing an appropriate odotipo, sensations are enhanced that generate such a positive impact on visitors to stores and businesses, that it increases the desire to stay longer in these sites, and to purchase the product or service offered there.
But that’s not all, because the brand will remain associated with the olfactory memory, and will make possible the desire to return on many other occasions.
Recommended fragrances for each business by olfactory family
Aromatic: They revolve around plants such as thyme, lavender, rosemary, different teas. They are usually combined with citrus and/or floral notes, creating a relaxed atmosphere very suitable for resting areas such as hotels or rural houses. They are always a safe bet when we doubt which fragrance to choose for our establishment or perfumed shipment.
Citrus: Those fragrances that revolve around citrus fruits such as lemon, lime, orange, tangerine and grapefruit. They are very suitable for environments where we want to value freshness and cleanliness. They have a very strong volatile factor that requires a strong diffusion to ensure a constant effect. Very current in the context that we are living in Covid.
Floral: Widely used as body fragrances, – rose, gardenia, jasmine, geranium, in the ambience of spaces or ceramic elements are a temptation for many people but require proper treatment, with woody base notes and very fresh middle notes that leave no one indifferent. A suitable option for women’s fashion spaces, especially for young people.
Fruity: These are those that develop around a fruit, often of tropical or Mediterranean origin (pineapple, mango, peach, etc.). They are very sweet fragrances that are preferably attractive to young people and are suitable for environments where we want to create a relaxed and lively atmosphere.
Gourmand: In this group we would include all those fragrances that evoke food or beverages such as chocolate, coffee, pastries, bread. They require a very appropriate treatment for each environment because the olfactory perceptions of each person are very different for products of the same denomination, such as bread and coffee, depending on the country. They are used as an element that awakens the desire to consume the scented item or as a reminder element when the product is packaged and is not perceived by the customer in the establishment.
Herbaceous: Intense green in color, such as bamboo, balsam fir, they are often combined with citrus notes and have a fresh and lively element that is very attractive in environments that need to get out of the dark and gray. They are also very relaxing and make the visitor’s stay very pleasant.
Marine: Combine citrus, ozonic notes with marine hearts that generate a very relaxed state like when we are at the sea or at a river waterfall. Many suitable for stressed client environments such as doctor’s visits.
Spicy: From elements such as cinnamon, pepper, coriander or vanilla, often combined with woods and/or aromatic herbs, we create an elegant, fresh and provocative fragrance, very suitable for an exclusive or novel context in cold environments.
Woody: We reach the last and most powerful family. These are the strongest and densest fragrances that combine woods such as sandalwood or oud with floral and herbal elements such as patchouli. Very suitable for elegant and sophisticated environments, they tend to be highly appreciated in warmer countries. It is necessary to take into account the moderation of the intensity when diffusing in European countries.
Inprofit. Your scent marketing agency.
No matter what your business, a customized scent can ensure brand loyalty, enhance the ambiance and improve the bottom line.
Thanks to our experts, the air freshening and odor control applications we offer, you can now have your own fragrance specially designed for your business.
Contact us and we will elaborate your olfactory marketing strategy for the scenting of your commercial space thanks to neuromarketing.
We are specialists in Sensory Marketing.
