Odor Control: The Unsung Hero of Effective Scent Marketing

Making a good first impression is always a great idea. That’s especially true when you open a business. The ambience of the store should be intriguing, drawing your guests in, making them feel curious about what’s inside. One of the most powerful methods for doing so is called scent marketing.

Also called olfactory branding, scent marketing puts the power of scent to work for you. When your store smells good, your customers are happier. They come in more often, hang around longer, and spend more money on what you’re selling. Ideal for a business owner!

Scent branding deploys aromas throughout your store, either placed strategically at key places (entrance, register, bathroom) or delivered via your HVAC system. They ensure your store smells good, but there’s more. They also influence our feelings and behaviors, subtly guiding us as we make decisions. And guess what: smells affect our emotions and memories, too.

With the right scent filling the air in your store, you can more easily attract customers and win their loyalty by connecting with them on a deeper level. And that’s the kind of shopping experience they’ll remember and tell their friends about.

A pleasantly scented space is better than a smelly, stinky one. But what smells good—and what smells bad, stinky, or rank—varies from person to person. Smells are very personal this way. As you consider how to scent your store, these examples may help you understand more about it.

Masking odors is the process of covering one smell with another. Air freshener cans that spray a quick burst of concentrated fragrance are a popular example. Sometimes, they work. Other times, it makes the space smell even worse. That’s because the stinky molecules in the air are still present, mixing with the rest and creating a miasma.

Neutralizing odors, on the other hand, is all about eliminating lingering smells. By trapping the odor molecules or altering them chemically, this method leaves the air clean and ready for a new scent. This method takes more time and effort, but the results are clear.

Adding a pleasant scent to your place of business sounds great. But when you’re faced with combating the unpleasant scents that crowds bring, scent marketing can backfire. It has to be properly implemented to succeed. That means dealing with stale, lingering odors first.

The industries below have predictable, repetitive challenges regarding odors:

• Restaurants & Cafes fight the smells of cooking, crowds, and bathrooms.
• Healthcare Facilities & Hospitals deal with body odor, feces, urine, and much more.
• Gyms & Fitness Centers trap the smells of body odor, sweat, and locker room stench.
• Hotels & Motels battle heavy foot traffic, diverse guest profiles, and musty buildings.

Each of these businesses wants as many customers as possible. But along with the crowds come challenges. For each industry to succeed in scent marketing, they first need to address these negative perceptions. Once they did, they were able to rise above the miasma to a fresh, clean space.

Odor control is important, but eliminating bad smells isn’t easy. Finding the source can be difficult, especially if you have more than one bad smell. To truly remove or neutralize odors requires a deeper understanding of odor itself. Then you need the right strategy and the proper tools.

Doctors’ offices deal with a wide range of unpleasant odors. Regular office buildings, too. When people gather, smells follow. Public bathrooms are one of the most egregious examples. Just think of all the products provided to users to mitigate smells—water and scented/antimicrobial soap to wash hands, towels to dry them, and maybe even some cologne or perfume. There’s probably a fan to draw out bad air, and scented tabs in the urinals, too!

That’s just one example in one kind of space. If your place of business sells food, well, that’s another level of concern. Restaurants and cafes, and even movie theaters, have to be diligent in cleaning their spaces multiple times a day. Spills and misplaced food produce their own odors and must be dealt with, too. And these buildings have restrooms, too!

For guests, visitors, clients, and especially employees, lingering bad odors are distracting, off-putting, and even unhealthy. Something as simple as water can cause stinky smells. Beyond the obvious, ensuring your store or office smells nice has many advantages:

Better Air Quality

Businesses that prioritize scent marketing have higher-quality air because they control negative odors AND deploy pleasant odors. For best results, this two-step approach is key.

Improved Experience for All

Guests to your business come in all shapes and sizes. You expect to see customers, sure…but you may also have vendors, special guests, and neighboring business owners stop in for a visit. But when your store smells great, you want everyone to take a whiff.

Enhanced Employee Productivity

Generally speaking, happy employees are more productive employees. A clean, fresh-smelling workplace goes a long way toward ensuring your crew is comfortable. When they are, you’re more likely to get their best effort.

Reduced Maintenance Stress

If your maintenance guy is spending hours every week on odor mitigation, other important tasks may be overlooked. A professionally installed system of fragrance diffusers is a great way to free him up for other tasks.

At Aire-Master, we’ve been helping businesses with odor control and scent solutions since 1958. That experience has shown that a two-step approach to scent marketing delivers the best results.

Step 1: Odor Control

After reading this blog, you understand the challenges businesses face in controlling odors. We’re experts at finding and neutralizing bad smells, not just covering them up. We’ll make sure the air is clean and fresh at the molecular level.

Step 2: Scent Marketing

Once we’ve neutralized any lingering, unpleasant smells, it’s time for next-level scent marketing! We’ll guide you through the process of selecting a scent that aligns with your brand, then install the type of scent-delivery system that best suits your needs. (Small spaces may only need one or two fragrance diffusers, while a larger building may benefit more from an HVAC-based system.)

Based on our professional experience, this two-step approach is the most effective way to implement scent marketing.