Scent Marketing Strategies That Shape Customer Behavior and Drive Revenue

For businesses, catching a customer’s attention isn’t easy. From cheesy promotions to tugging on emotions, customers have seen and felt it all. They’ve become jaded to the classic bag of tricks. Most of the newer ones, too!

Companies on the cutting edge of marketing are looking for new, exciting ways to help their brands stand out…and many are following their noses to scent marketing. Enacted in the right way—with intention, balance, and subtlety—olfactory branding encourages people to feel more comfortable, browse longer, purchase more, and remember the experience positively.

How can businesses use scent to drive customer loyalty to their brands? The more you dig into the science of scent, the more fascinating the answer becomes. But on a basic level, places and things that smell good attract more people than places that don’t. The strategies employed in scent marketing take those sentiments to the next level.

From millennia of scenting, as well as centuries of scientific study, we’ve come to understand that scent is our most powerful sense, constantly influencing our decisions. That’s because of its direct access to the limbic system, where our brains process mood, memory, and emotion. As we breathe in, scents are processed by our olfactory bulbs and quickly filtered and matched to scents our brains recognize from past encounters. This helps explain why certain fragrances can catalyze surprisingly strong responses. When a match occurs, sparks fly!

When encountered, those familiar scents (matches) trigger a series of chemical reactions in the brain that can prompt flashbacks to long-held memories, often dating back to childhood. That’s why the smell of fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies takes so many of us back to grandma’s kitchen. Or the scent of fish in a cold stream transports us back to afternoons fishing with dad.

That’s a glimpse into the powerful connection between scent and memory. But there’s more. Human moods are notoriously fickle, and as it turns out, scents are part of the reason. All day, aromas act on us in subtle ways. Helping us feel calm and relaxed in the waiting room. Attracting us toward the coffee shop in the grocery store, where we linger and rejuvenate. Even influencing our decisions on what laundry detergent, hand soap, and cleaning spray to buy.

The data backs it up. One often-cited study that documented this phenomenon was done in 1999. It showed that customers were 84% more likely to buy Nike sneakers when shown those shoes in a floral-scented room, as compared to a neutral-scented room. Since then, Nike has been one of the biggest proponents of scent marketing. [SOURCE]

Nike leaned into scent marketing to expand the brand. By doing so, they encouraged customers to do more than just recognize the brand. Through fragrance, they were invited to form a bond with the brand, a kind of emotional connection that transcended The Swoosh. They found that it enhanced their customers’ in-store experience in multiple ways, building loyalty while subtly encouraging more shopping…and more purchases.

Scent has the potential to be your most successful salesperson. Always working in the background to influence perception, it works tirelessly, never complains, and just needs a recharge now and then!

Take a look at these case-by-case examples from various industries to see how scent branding can be customized to almost any business environment:

• Retail stores benefit from associating their brand with scent, helping to reinforce recognition while elevating perception of quality. There’s a rainbow of “scent flavors” to choose from, offering every brand a chance to find its own signature scent.
• Banks tend to want to project an aura of prestige and security; certain fragrances can help with that. Leather and wood are popular choices.
• Healthcare facilities and assisted living homes have success using scents like rosemary to calm residents and eucalyptus to project a clean, healthy environment
• Gyms have to tamp down the unwanted smells of sweat and wet, while also adding clean, energizing scents—a tricky balancing act. Citrus scents can help.

The right aroma draws customers in, encourages them to stay longer, increases the enjoyment of their visit, and prompts them to stay longer and spend more. The brand experience is reinforced, the bottom line is padded, and everyone goes home happy. That’s the power of olfactory branding at work.

A thoughtful approach to scent marketing will set your business up for success. First, consider working with a partner like Aire-Master to choose scents, or even develop a signature scent specific to your brand alone.

Second, choose how you want to deploy your scent. The size of your location makes a difference. For example, if you’re running a small store, you may only need a few fragrance diffusers. If your business encompasses a large building and/or multiple floors, HVAC-based scenting is a more effective option.

Because we’ve been inundated with all sorts of signs, billboards, and ads since childhood, we tend to think of branding as visual. But it’s much more wide-reaching, encompassing sound, touch/texture, scent, and even environmental ambience. Adding scent to your marketing profile is a great way to expand your brand’s reach and broadcast its personality for all to smell.

Because aromas work on our brains in unique and potent ways, they’re an ideal way to ensure that customers recall a brand. That recognition is the first step to securing a connection with it. Visitors may not remember ALL the details of a store, gym, or office…but they’re likely to recall the smell. That’s something to build on.

Including scent as part of a multi-sensory branding strategy helps businesses:

• Create a holistic branding experience
• Stand out from competitors
• Encourage emotional connections
• Bring customers back, again and again

If you’re going to invest in scent marketing, you want it to work. How will you know? Simple tools can be used to track the changes in customer behavior. NOTE: It’s important to have data from before and after the scent is used to track the difference. So start tracking now.

• Measure Customer Dwell Time: Use data you can gather or observe to measure how long customers shop once they enter.
• Sales Metrics: Consider doing experiments during which you turn off scent for short, measurable times. Look at how your sales compare during these different periods.
• Customer Feedback: Here’s a novel approach—ask your clients what they think! Surveys are one way. Asking customers for ratings as they check out is another popular way to capture data. But the most effective tactic may be encouraging salespeople and floor staff to talk to customers; they’ll often be glad to share how they feel about what you’re doing.
• Back Again: Find a way to track repeat visits, like customer rewards. Their loyalty is your ticket to profit. Once you implement your scenting strategy, key in on those numbers.

Scent works silently…but its effects are real and trackable. Before you deploy, explore more about the details of measuring scent marketing success.