Steve Smith, head of thought leadership at Starcom MediaVest London, looks at the success of different brands at driving emotional engagement through Facebook content...

SMG Research, London, recently undertook a study with Facebook users to understand the effectiveness of brands' content on Facebook at driving emotional engagement.

Supermarkets was one of the seven brand categories we investigated. First off, we looked at the proportions of visitors to each of five supermarket Facebook brand pages who reported experiencing positive emotions whilst viewing their content.

Visitors to Supermarket C were most likely to experience positive emotions whilst viewing content; visitors to Supermarket B were least likely.

Two questions are, what value do emotional engagements have in terms of the purchase funnel and advocacy? And do emotional engagements have more value than cognitive engagements, impacts on senses and driving curiosity?

Looking at Supermarket C, we can see that people who reported being impacted emotionally were most likely to prefer the supermarket over its competitors (66% of people who reported being impacted emotionally). People who were impacted through their visual senses were most likely to talk about the supermarket, and people who reported being emotionally engaged were only slightly less likely.

Of course, some visitors who already prefer Supermarket C over its competitors will already be predisposed to be emotionally engaged with its content. Nevertheless, it is still highly probably that emotional engagement has some impact upon purchase funnel decisions and advocacy actions. Recommendations from the study include:

• Design content to impact people emotionally and visually
• Understand what types of emotions are likely to engage your visitors
• Use emotional engagement as a measure of Facebook value in terms of purchase funnel, advocacy, repeat engagements, and brand equity

For more supermarket insights, visit www.emergingspaces.co.uk.