Different customers have different emotional needs – and when you understand your customers’ emotional needs and motivations, you can better deliver a personalized experience and achieve greater success. Read on to gain insight into the four main emotional customer types.
What are emotional customer types?
Emotional customer types are different segments of customers who have unique emotional needs and preferences.
Typically, we work with four different emotional customer types. These types of customers may have different motivations and react in different ways based on their emotional state.
By understanding these emotional customer types, businesses can tailor their marketing strategies and communications to meet specific needs and create communications that appeal to the emotions of each type. This can increase the chances of successful sales and long-term relationships with customers.
Why is it important to understand emotional customer types?
There are several reasons why it’s important to understand the four emotional customer types, including
- Improved customer experience: When businesses understand emotional customer types, they can tailor their products and services to meet specific needs. This leads to a better experience for customers, who feel valued and understood, increasing their satisfaction and loyalty to the company.
- Increased loyalty and re-sales: By understanding emotional customer types, businesses can build stronger relationships with their customers. This results in increased loyalty and the chances of repeat purchases from these customers.
- More targeted marketing: Knowing the emotional needs of different customer types allows businesses to create more effective marketing campaigns. They can use images or messages that appeal directly to the emotional side of different segments of their target audience.
- Streamlined sales process sales process : By knowing customers’ emotional drivers, sales teams can better predict which products or services a customer will be most interested in. This can shorten the sales cycle as the team can present the most relevant solutions from the start, reducing the need for lengthy negotiations or persuasion. Knowing your customer types and creating personas can improve your sales process and be an important element of your sales strategy.
Another option is also to create personas that can help you understand your ICP and target audience in your sales strategy.
The 4 emotional customer types
Within customer types, there are 4 different customer types, each with their own focus:
- The red customer type
- The yellow customer type
- The blue customer type
- The green customer type
1. The red customer type
The red customer type is motivated by stimuli. For them, it’s about leading the way, being a trendsetter and always being one step ahead. They thrive in the spotlight, love being the center of attention and are always looking for something to make them even more unique.
For the red customer type, it’s a way of life to constantly be at the forefront of the latest, whether it’s fashion, technology or cultural trends. Unpredictability and excitement are their daily fuel. They value freedom and typically choose brands that can offer them a kick of innovation and originality.
Purchase motivation: stimuli and renewal
2. The yellow customer type
The yellow customer type is motivated by wellbeing. For them, it’s about relationships, trust and a genuine desire to help others and make the world a better place. They strive for authenticity in their choices and are often the ones who seek deeper meaning in their purchases. It always wants to know who is behind a product.
For the yellow customer type, it’s important to take care of themselves and others. They want to feel like they are part of something bigger and that they are making a positive contribution to the community. When they shop, they look for brands that resonate with their core values and are transparent in their communication. To sell to the yellow customer type, it’s therefore important to build a genuine and honest relationship with them.
Purchase motivation: wellbeing and care
3. The blue customer type
The blue customer type is motivated by control. For them, details are paramount and they take nothing for granted. They are strategic, analytical and appreciate concrete evidence, numbers, statistics and a clearly defined path to success.
For the blue customer type, it’s important to see and understand the direct link between effort and reward. When they shop or make decisions, they will always base them on reliable information and proven value. So, to gain the trust of the blue customer, it’s important to prove that you can help them succeed.
Purchase motivation: control and precision
4. The green customer type
The green customer type is motivated by security. For them, it’s about sticking to the familiar and avoiding unnecessary risks. They value in-depth knowledge and a solid foundation when making decisions. For the green customer type, clear guidelines are important and often rely on recommendations and proven methods.
When faced with a choice, they will prefer brands or solutions that demonstrate clarity, consistency and reliability. To engage the green customer, it’s essential to offer them a sense of security and reassurance through detailed descriptions, reputable references and full transparency in the process.
Purchase motivation: security and stability
How to identify emotional customer types in your customer base
Analyzing buying behavior and interactions is a crucial method for identifying emotional customer types in your customer base. By studying how your customers react to different ads and what actions they take, you can begin to build a picture of their emotional state and preferences. This can be done with the features offered by a CRM solution, where the interaction design gathers all interactions from a person in an overview.
Using customer surveys and feedback also provides valuable insights into your customers’ emotional needs. By asking directly about their experiences and opinions, you’ll be able to gather important information that can help you better understand their emotional response to your product or service.
Based on this knowledge of different customer types and their preferences, you can customize your marketing and sales strategy to meet their individual needs and desires. By identifying and appealing to the different types of customers in your target audience, you can increase customer satisfaction, build trust and create long-lasting customer relationships. There are the following customer types.
You can identify what types of customers your customers are by analyzing their buying behavior, looking at what ads or website elements they respond to, or by conducting customer surveys and asking them specific questions.
Get to know your customers better with Radiant
Radiant can help you dive deeper into understanding your customer types and their preferences. With experience from over 100 companies and access to over 15,000 data points on sales activities, we are experts in identifying what works in a competitive market.
A structured way to understand your customer types
With a powerful CRM system like HubSpot , you can collect customer data from everything from past interactions to advertisements customers have engaged with. It provides a deeper insight into the customer’s interests and what types of customers they are. With Radiant’s help in implementing HubSpot, HubSpot as a Service or Sales as a Service, you can ensure that all parts of your business work together to understand your customer types and tailor your sales and marketing processes to match them.
Investing in a CRM system should be seen as an opportunity to achieve a high ROI rather than a cost. Without a central platform, it can be difficult to ensure that marketing data is effectively utilized by sales and customer service. With Radiant’s HubSpot as a Service, you can ensure that your investment in marketing, sales and customer service is fully utilized and that all processes are optimized.
