How do you express your love? And how do you know when somebody is expressing their love to you? Well, it’s hard to answer these questions. Fortunately, this is where love languages come in– a concept that we’ve probably encountered at least once. But, unlike previous encounters, here’s when we’ll discover how love languages play a role in digital marketing. Yes, you read that right, love is present in the online space. So come and join us today as we uncover more about the digital world and how we can be fluent in the (love) languages it uses!
Love Languages in the Digital Marketing Scene
The Five Love Languages is a concept that was first introduced by Dr. Gary Chapman in his book of the same name. According to Chapman, people prefer to express and receive love in their own unique ways. In order to better understand this, he decided to formulate the five love languages we know today. These are Words of Affirmation, Physical Touch, Receiving Gifts, Quality Time, and Acts of Service. If you still don’t know what your love language is, you can easily take a test here to find out.
We agree with Dr. Chapman, and we are certain that these love languages extend to the virtual world (and through digital marketing, no less). This virtual world always seems to be on-the-go and things are always changing; and the one constant thing in it has got to be love (and sure, change too). Thus, we need to be able to speak these love languages well– especially to our favorite brands and pages. The only way to know if we’re already fluent in it is through the ever-so-reliable social media metrics.
1) Words of Affirmation: A Little Goes a Long Way
Do you get butterflies in your stomach whenever you get complimented? Or feel giddy when your friends text you words of encouragement. Chances are that your preferred love language is Words of Affirmation!
Words of Affirmation, the most common love language, is primarily expressed through words and speech, rather than actions. Whether it’s just a simple compliment or a grand “I love you,” written or spoken, people who prefer this love language feel affirmed by any words of appreciation. The best part is that this form of affection can be expressed throughout any medium– even in the digital space!
While people feel appreciated through compliments and praise, brands feel the same when people like and favorite their posts! This is reflected in the social media metric Applause Rate. Brands take these into account in order to gauge what kind of content their audience would like to see. So make sure to show your favorite brands some more love affirmation by liking and favoriting their posts!
2) Physical Touch: Sharing is Caring
Remember that time when we could easily hug our friends and family? Oh, the good old days. In the age of COVID-19, people whose primary love language is Physical Touch may have felt lacking in this aspect. Due to quarantine and social distancing protocols, it has become considerably harder to physically reach out to your loved ones (we agree, virtual calls don’t always suffice either). But while it may be hard to give your friends a hug at the moment, you can easily show a brand your love for them by increasing its Virality Rate!
Virality Rate is an engagement metric that measures the number of shares a post gets relative to the number of impressions it gets during an amount of time. Brands and digital marketers use this to assess whether consumers find value in their content. People do often say that if you love someone, you should show them. Which is why, we believe that public display of affection also plays a role when it comes to this love language. Show off your brand and don’t be afraid to give it a big warm (virtual) hug by sharing their posts so you can share the love!
3) Receiving Gifts: It’s The Thought That Counts
Whoever said gift-giving was only for birthdays and holidays is wrong, because we do more giving than we expect. A lot of people whose love language is Receiving Gifts take great joy in the thoughtfulness of the individual. Gifts and gestures go a long way, and these can spell all the difference in a relationship. The same goes for what happens in the digital space. The factor of being thoughtful also comes into play before you give the actual gift.
Did you know that every time you click on an advertisement, the advertiser pays the publisher because you simply clicked on the ad? A simple click turns into money, a gift if you will. This Cost-Per-Click is the price for giving gifts (see what we did there?). The factor of thoughtfulness comes into play when we want to go beyond the ad and when we want to learn more about it, so we click. This thoughtfulness is exactly what drives the ability to give– whether it be actual gifts to loved ones or, really, just to the advertiser. So be generous and click on that ad already!
4) Quality Time: Just Between Us
Quality time can be described as “uninterrupted and focused conversations,” where “one-on-one time is critical.” This translates to special and intimate moments with loved ones, and while that seems pretty impossible in the digital space, we can still spend plenty of quality time with the brands and platforms we love.
Whenever we choose to subscribe to a newsletter, a channel, or a brand, we are adding to the Conversion Rate of a website. We deepen our interaction with that brand by choosing to subscribe, download, or sign up. This act of further engagement allows us to know more about the brand, strengthening the bond we have with it. It may sound silly, but imagine the first time you shared a meal with an acquaintance who turned out to be your best friend today. That shared meal is just the physical version of subscribing to a platform. You turn what could’ve just been any other platform into a beloved brand because of the decision to spend personal time with them. So click on that button, because who knows, you might just click with that brand!
5) Acts of Service: Going the Extra Step
We’ve all probably done Acts of Service in one way or another. Whether it’s opening the door for someone or volunteering to drive them somewhere, a little help goes a long way. Whatever it is, being able to help someone shows that you are there for them. Helping someone requires doing something else for the sake of another person. And we can measure this love language through the Click-Through Rate.
Whenever we click on links that let us learn more content about the brand, we’re expressing an act of service. We go out of our way to learn about the brand, basically opening the door for that brand to make way for them into our lives. And in so doing, we’re able to help out that brand by giving them one more customer, one more person with whom they can share their mission to. Make sure to take that extra click today!
Metrics as Measure of Love
There are many more metrics outside of the five we’ve mentioned, but we believe that it’s these which give us a good basis for whether we’ve been expressing the love languages enough or not. Of course, a level of brand awareness is needed before you can express your love, and the other end of that spectrum involves heartbreaks and bounce rates– you know, the one that got away.
At the end of the day, we all have our preferred love languages of giving and receiving. But the beauty of technology and the digital space is that it doesn’t limit us to the kind of love we can have and give. It doesn’t confine love as a noun, an adjective, or even a verb. Digital marketing allows it to be all these things at once, and we can be sure of this because we’ve figured out a way to measure it thanks to social media metrics.
The Power of Love (Languages) in Digital Marketing
This technology-driven world has encouraged us to be more self-aware, for better or worse. It brought us a way to qualify and quantify the love and attachment we have for brands. Fortunately, it doesn’t end with the numbers.
To be fluent in love languages is also about learning to love sincerely. When faced with infinite brands and pages, it’s extremely challenging, and even crippling, to make your next move. This crucial point is when digital marketing comes in and helps you realize what’s best for you– what it is that you want to know more about so you can subscribe, click, and fall in love. Because without digital marketing, we wouldn’t know how to truly love (at least in the virtual world).
