Creating an Emotional Connection Through Physical Material Samples

Let’s talk about how creating an emotional connection through physical material samples works. Does it sound like a tall order? Read on to understand how psychology, culture, and your product samples can work in harmony to evoke emotional connections in your target customer base.

As human beings, when we experience emotional responses to interactions (whether with people or objects), we attach significance to the interaction and store it in our memories. This memory-forming interaction grabs our attention, holds our focus, and prompts us to form an opinion.

As a building materials manufacturer or retailer, this level of interaction between your consumers and your products is precisely the result you need to cut through the high number of advertisements, product placements, and ever-revolving trends consumers currently experience.

So, how can you spark memory-forming interactions between your customer base and your product samples?

Physical material samples are truly the ideal medium for creating these sought-after moments! When your customers are handling your samples, they are experiencing them through sight and touch. Being able to experience your product in person after the time they’ve (almost certainly) spent browsing inspiration online can pack quite a punch.

How can you maximize the impact of this moment?

By having samples of impeccable quality and aesthetic composition, you’ll give your customer a glimpse of how this material will improve their home. They’ll understand how this texture, finish, color, and feel will really look—and how their lives will be upgraded as a result.

This moment is where the emotion is sparked. For most people, the way they feel about their homes has a huge impact on their emotional well-being.

Did you know? More than half of the decisions people make about their purchases result from feelings rather than logical processes?

Despite this fact, consumers believe that they are making these choices in an impartial manner. Forrester Research conducted a survey asking consumers whether they feel a personal connection to brands they patronize. The stunning result? 89% of respondents said no.

This means that when brands manage to successfully create this emotional connection, their customers don’t even realize it’s happening.

Hubspot examined 1,400 ad campaigns that had experienced an impressive ROI. They found that ads created with emotional content yielded double the ROI over ads that highlighted rational content. This data further establishes the fundamental importance of emotional connections between content and consumer.

The Disney Institute reports that emotionally engaged consumers are less likely to shop around and are less price-sensitive.

This is exactly the result you want. Your product samples are your most important pre-purchase hook. You want a customer to interact with your physical material samples and respond with genuine feeling!

Once you’ve achieved this link, your customer will move quickly toward purchasing without comparing prices or questioning whether they should look at competing materials.

In that moment, they feel that this floor, siding, roof, fence, or tiled backsplash is perfect for them—and that’s enough.

At Exalt Samples, we approach this goal with discipline. We believe our attention to detail and impeccable quality is the first step toward you converting potential clients into loyal (and repeat) customers.

If you’re not seeing positive emotional moments happen on your retail floor, it’s time to upgrade your samples.

Reach out to us today, and let’s start a conversation about how our sample displays will help you grab your clients on an emotional level. Our goal: material samples that initiate a sense of instant connection.