Scent Marketing: How Ecommerce Brands Can Boost Sales

Call it Holistic, Witty, Innovative, Timely and Relevant, Targeted or Strategic, Subliminal or Modern. Call it however you like. Use every word or buzzword that comes to your mind, but the truth is the following: Marketing has opened its inexhaustible inspirational box and found a new way to amaze us!

Knowledge and information – empirical, observational or scientific – have always been sources of inspiration, blocks that paved paths towards new techniques and strategies that caught us by surprise, amazed us and transported us!

This is exactly what Scent Marketing does! Catches us by surprise, amazes us and transports us!

Scent Marketing: What is it and its effectiveness

It is actually self explanatory! Marketing through Scent. Yes! Bit by bit all senses enter into the game! The next one we will be the 6th, but till then let’s focus on Scent!

Lately, many brands and businesses have started using this type of Marketing. From Burger King to Cinnabon and from A&F to the small roast coffee-shop that just opened at the corner of your street. From Muji and IKEA to Rolls Royce and from Cineplex and Samsung to Singapore airlines. And these are just some examples of companies that use Scent Marketing.

In a sense, it is as instinctive and normal as it is scientific and revolutionary. It can be done as easily as opening the door of your business and letting the passers by know, what you are baking inside. If the smell is good, the success is guaranteed!

Some Scent Marketing Statistics and why it is effective:

• 75% of all emotions generated every day are due to smell
• It is a 100 times more likely to remember something we smell over something we see, hear or touch
• According to a Rockefeller University study; in the short term we remember just 1% of what we touch, 2% of what we hear, 5% of what we see, 15% of what we taste and 35% of what we smell.
• Patients that were exposed to a sweet vanilla-like scent, experienced 63% less overall anxiety than those not exposed.
• We recall Scents with 65% accuracy after a year

How Scent Marketing works

You know it, but you think you don’t. You are feeling it, but you are not sure. It gets to you, but you don’t know how.

You might be walking outside a restaurant, wandering at Heathrow or Alderney, going down the Champs Elysées and smells constantly overwhelm you. You grab something to eat, maybe a fragrance as well. But were you hungry? Was a new cologne what you were searching for?

This is how – more or less – Scent Marketing functions; and if it works so well it is because it is unconscious (or subconscious?).

The urge created is so strong and persistent because it comes from way too deep. It is hard to say no because it is primitive and elemental. It creates an unforgettable link between our emotions and a product or a brand, in a way so direct and at the same time so invisible! How can we say no to the collective unconscious?

The sense of smell is our oldest and most powerful one. It ties together our brain, our emotions and our memory. It is so cerebral, so mysterious and deeply esoteric that its exact function and nature is still a matter of debate. Some scientists go so far as to even call it the quantum sense.

Should you brand be applying Scent Marketing?

There is one thing we should seriously consider though. Are all brands and businesses eligible for Scent Marketing Techniques? The easy answer is No! But, the best one is It Depends!

It depends on how you are going to apply it. It depends on your product. It depends on the space you want to market your products. It depends on what your strategy wants to achieve. Scent Marketing is effective, efficient, minimalistic and flexible. If the right environment is created, the right Scent Marketing idea will fit automatically into the picture. 

• Consumers were 84% more likely to buy the Nike running shoes in the scented room 
• Consumers feel better in spaces that smell good and are willing to spend more than they normally would
• Appropriate environmental fragrance would enhance approach responses toward the product more than would the inappropriate environmental fragrance.

The Types of Scent Marketing

Aroma billboard: Take a scent and let it flow in your commercial environment!

Thematic: Use a scent to create a mood!

Ambient: Choose a subtle Scent and mask bad odours. Marketing should also be functional!

Signature Scent: Pick a scent and make it your own! Make it your Signature Scent

The options vary and the ways to use them are only limited by the degree of our creative reach. For example, today that internet sales skyrocket, the moment of receiving our ordered goods and unboxing them, is as important as the product itself. Imagine what would happen if your product appeared with your signature smell? The unboxing moment would be unique! Your identity would be in the air…

Another advantage of Scent Marketing? It can be used by anyone, no matter the budget. Scent Marketing for you new Restaurant? Set an open-plan Cuisine and let the clients smell what you are cooking! Is it promoting your Grandma’s cookies? We’ll say no more! Is it Luxury Product Marketing actions? No problem at all!

Even in Healthcare, Scent Marketing will mark a difference! “Vanilla scent can be highly effective at reducing anxiety and reducing claustrophobia in MRI facilities”

Final Thoughts

Now that marketing and branding have transcended mere advertisement, and head towards experience-type practices, Scent Marketing is a great option. Who you are and what you do, can be expressed in a way that touches directly the soul and the spirit. The aromatic is effective, yes, but the best thing about it, is that it can bring us back wonderful memories, take us back to moments we thought we had forgotten!

Archimedes had said that he only needed a point to stand and he could move the World. Well, we might not move the World (yet) but:

Give us a notion of who you are and a new marketing experience will come to life!