The Power of Scent Marketing: Influencing Consumer Behavior

Scent marketing is one of the most powerful tools in the modern marketing arsenal. It makes a splash in several ways, including fostering a strong sense of brand identity. A second effect is that scent marketing can directly impact consumer behavior in your location. Our experience reveals the tremendous impact that scent marketing can have for businesses with a brick-and-mortar business model.

We’ve found that combining brand identity scenting with in-person scent selection produces the most reliable results for businesses. Having a recognizable scent that simultaneously plays on the emotional connections that scent fosters can make up the foundation of a highly effective scent marketing campaign.

Forming a Brand Identity

Not every business owner realizes that there are ways to associate a brand with a distinct scent. Businesses including restaurants, coffee shops, and florists have obvious ways to connect what they sell with distinct scents, but clothing and electronics companies may not see the potential of scent marketing at first. The reality is that every business can take advantage of this form of branding with a little insight.

Using the example of clothing stores, imagine that your business launches a marketing campaign that focuses on leather. Accessories, jackets, and shoes may all be featured items for this campaign. One way to direct consumers to focus on that campaign and to help identify it with your brand is to specifically evoke the scent of leather throughout your store. Over time, this campaign and scent pairing can become synonymous with your brand to remind people of their past positive experiences with your clothing.

Inspiring a Willingness to Linger and Buy

There’s a significant reason why grocery stores put fresh flowers at their main entrances followed by fruits and vegetables. A consumer walking into that layout is immediately making associations with spring days, vibrant life, and pleasant memories. The rich colors found in various fruits and vegetables call to mind health and vitality, two things that are important for inspiring consumers to purchase fresh produce.

Grocery stores are just one example of how scent marketing can combine with a visual layout to alter the way that consumers approach your establishment. The senses work best in harmony, and the science behind scent reveals that external associations (eg., attractive images, labels with positive descriptions) are powerful supplements to scent. Savvy business owners can even adjust the scents in different zones of the store. Department stores, for example, can use scents that align with varying sections of their space to set the right mood for each target customer group.

Consumers are far more likely to act on a purchase if they develop a sense of ownership in the product before buying it. The longer they remain in your store, the more likely they are to imagine themselves owning that product and follow through with a desire to purchase it. The right scents can easily inspire customers to linger.

Essential Oil Diffusion as a Delivery System

Essential oil is the best medium for delivering scents throughout stores. There are several devices that you can use depending on whether your store has central air and whether you’d like to establish a single scent throughout or implement varying scents in different departments. In either case, you can take advantage of the natural benefits of essential oils over candles and artificial scents.

Essential oils are a natural approach to creating a vibrant scent. With their naturally-occurring origin, these oils lack the chemical-like odor that you may find in artificial scents. They have the same chemical composition as the natural scents that trigger memories and emotional reactions in your consumers.

Whether you already have a strong idea of the kind of scents you’d like to associate with your brand or are entirely new to the notion of scent marketing, we can help you find a signature scent and the means to distribute it throughout your business.