All About Scent Marketing, A Clever Tool

Scent marketing is one of the biggest trends in retail and hospitality right now. Why? Because studies have shown that the way a place smells can positively impact consumer habits. In this article, we explore what scent marketing is, how it works, and the benefits it can offer your business.

What is Scent Marketing?

The facilities management sector is no exception. Smart infrastructure, with Smart technology built-in, allows businesses to achieve efficiencies and economic advantages that simply haven’t been possible before.

Keeping up With Consumer Hygiene Demands

Scent marketing is essentially a marketing tool that targets a consumer’s sense of smell. Using strategically placed diffusers, the air is filled with subtle, pleasant aromas, creating an instant, personal, and memorable connection between customer and space.

This connection has been proven to not only improve the customers experience, but to change their behaviours as well.

When designing consumer spaces, retailers must consider many factors to ensure a positive experience. From lighting and décor to temperature and music, everything that bombards our senses will affect how we feel about the place.

However, how a place smells is often overlooked. But with as many as three quarters of our daily emotions being generated thanks to smell, scent marketing is clearly an important part of any marketing plan.

How does Scent Marketing work?

The power of scent marketing all comes down to science. Our sense of smell – or ‘olfaction’ to give it its proper name – is the most-evolved of all our senses. Humans can identify over 10,000 different smells and the body is constantly producing new brain cells to ensure we can keep up.

Unlike other senses, an odour will immediately travel through our brain and be processed by the limbic system, the same part of the brain that stores our emotions and memories. So, for example, if you sniff something that reminds you of a happy place you visited as a child, the scent immediately triggers fond memories and positive emotions. These feelings are triggered far quicker by smells than they would be by our other senses.  

A scent is very personal, and something that can linger in our memories forever. We remember subconsciously and favourably certain places because of the way they smell. Whether it’s freshly ground coffee or a delicate floral aroma, pleasant smells have been shown to increase consumer loyalty to brands and enforce positive feelings.

Changing Behaviours 

Scent is clearly a powerful marketing tool. Studies have proven that spaces with pleasant scents can decrease stress and anxiety and encourage consumers to stay longer and spend more. As the second most powerful sense after vision, retailers are reaping the benefits, particularly within the retail and hospitality sectors.

Marketeers use scent to attract people and impress their senses. It has the power to link memory and emotion, allowing businesses to build their brand loyalty, reputation and image. This in turn can communicate value, meaning customers will spend more time and money in a space that they think smells good. 

Where can Scent Marketing be used?

By working together with the aesthetic of a premises, a signature scent can create a unique experience for visitors in all sorts of spaces, including shopping malls, luxury stores, and hotels.

Signature smells are one of the most popular forms of scent marketing. Lots of hotels use the same scent in all their locations, triggering positive memories whenever you set foot inside one of their properties. Ambient scents are another clever use of scent marketing. Often used in large malls or washrooms, they use subtle fragrance to fill a space or even cover other smells.

Delivering Scent Marketing to the Middle East