Learn how pathos in restoration marketing can help take your advertising to the next level!

Pathos is a fancy way to describe the appeal to emotion. Pathos in restoration marketing uses these emotions to drive water damage, mold damage, and fire damage leads.

A quick example of pathos, to make sure we’re all on the same page: do you know the commercials that display sad dogs while Sarah McLachlan sings in the background? The ones designed to make you open your wallet and donate to animal welfare charities?

That’s the power of emotions. Pathos in restoration marketing is more of the same. 

Using emotions in your marketing campaign.

If you’re putting money into digital marketing, there’s an expectation that you’ll receive that money, and more, in return. The exposure is excellent, but if someone knows your name but doesn’t become a customer, the advertising efforts are in vain.

Plus, through the quality work you do and the resultant word-of-mouth, the hope is that those digital marketing dollars will continue paying off in the long run. 

Using pathos in restoration marketing urges potential customers to take action by appealing to their emotions. It creates the conditions necessary for a client to make the call ASAP, instead of putting off the purchase for another day.

Here’s another example, this time from a speech you may have heard of: I Have a Dream by Martin Luther King Jr., given on August 28th, 1963:

“I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.”

The 2 opposites that increase sales.

Pathos in restoration marketing–or appealing to emotion–could be one of two things. One, it could encourage potential customers to take steps towards positive emotions. Two, it could motivate potential clients to avoid negative emotions.

Let’s take a look at each.

Running towards positive emotions.

Advertisements for soft drinks are notorious for using positive emotions to encourage people to buy their drinks. Think about any coca-cola or Pepsi commercial you’ve seen; odds are, you know what I’m talking about:

Groups of young, attractive people enjoying themselves, smiling and laughing. If you buy these drinks, you’ll feel this way too, or so the advertisers hope.

Visual aids are useful for ads capitalizing on positive emotions. In restoration marketing, this means displaying pictures of satisfied customers or claims to return the home to its previous condition.

Running away from negative emotions.

With their ridiculous hypothetical scenarios displayed in black and white, infomercials are the simplest example of appealing to negative emotions.

“Does this ever happen to you?” followed by some poor soul with their hands full, fumbling with too many tools. Then, miraculously, the one gadget they need, one that solves all their problems, is on display, rotating and sparkling, in full color.

Capitalizing on the negative emotions aspect of pathos in restoration marketing often shows worst-case scenarios, such as what happens when mold is allowed to proliferate untreated. Restoration marketers could also tell, through their words or with visual aids, how water damage treated by a professional with little or no experience can lead to more home repairs in the future.

What is an example of pathos?

An example of pathos is life-alert commercials. By showing an older adult on the ground and unable to call for assistance, they instill fear in the aged population, inspiring them to purchase life-alert products.

What is pathos advertising?

Pathos advertising is using advertisements to appeal to the emotions of an audience. The easiest way to think about the concept is to imagine political commercials. Each commercial aims to either inspire disgust for the opposing candidate or instill a sense of community and well-being for the candidate who paid for the advertisement.

Using pathos in restoration marketing.

Pathos boils down to creating an emotional response in the audience. It can be positive, inspiring potential customers to take action to join the group of happy, content members of the group they see or read about onscreen, or it can be negative, convincing potential customers to avoid a possible disastrous outcome. 

Pathos in restoration marketing uses these concepts in acquiring water damage, mold damage, and fire damage leads. By creating scenarios through both words and images, they invoke property owners to take action, believing the marketed company will lead them to the promised land.
If you are a restoration professional with questions about your marketing strategy and the role of pathos in restoration marketing, reach out to us via our contact page. We’d love to hear from you!