Content
Sensory Marketing: How to Attract Customers Through Sight, Sound, Touch, and More
March 11, 2025
8 mins
Sensory marketing is the trend of 2025. It’s about conveying an idea or product by amplifying associations. In other words, it’s the art of evoking emotions and creating an experience that will be remembered.
In this article, Promodo experts will explain sensory marketing definition, how 5 senses marketing works, its types, and how both online and offline brands can use it.
Sensory marketing is an advertising approach that engages all human senses simultaneously to create an emotional connection with a brand. As a result, consumers develop reflex associations—such as scent, taste, or music—that trigger memories of a specific brand.
For example, all McDonald’s restaurants have a signature scent designed to instantly evoke hunger. Just one or two visits are enough for the consumer’s brain to associate the aroma with delicious food and pleasant emotions. This is the essence of a reflex association.
Companies across various industries use sensory marketing to create memorable experiences that keep customers coming back. This approach is highly effective because consumers themselves seek immersive brand experiences. According to VML Intelligence, 63% of consumers want brands to provide them with multisensory engagement.
5 senses marketing focuses on influencing consumers' senses—sounds, scents, colors, textures, and more—to enhance perception and make a product or brand more memorable.
Logos, color schemes, and design influence how a company is perceived.
Using VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality) enhances engagement and creates an immersive experience.
For example, Coca-Cola’s signature red and white colors create an instant brand association. During the winter season, the brand also engages the sense of hearing with its iconic holiday jingle (chances are, you’re already humming "Holidays are coming" in your head).
Music themes, audio logos, and rhythmic motifs enhance brand recognition.
The phrase “Mmm… Danone” has been heard by millions in commercials. Over time, the brain automatically links this sound with a pleasant taste, yogurt's smooth texture, and every spoonful's joy. Even without seeing the product, just hearing this familiar sound can trigger cravings for dairy.
Pleasant fragrances in stores and restaurants encourage customers to stay longer and feel more comfortable. If a business operates across different formats, scent can be incorporated into product packaging, added as a scented sachet gift, or even sold as a custom fragrance diffuser.
The texture of packaging, interior materials, and other tactile aspects of a product play a crucial role.
Apple creates a premium feel through its minimalist and stylish packaging. The design of its stores reinforces the same experience with a consistent look and feel. Beyond sight and touch, Apple also engages customers through sound. Every iPhone produces the same recognizable lock sound—similar to something clicking shut—which gives users a sense of security, as if they are reliably locking their device.
In the food industry, taste is a key element, but even non-food brands can leverage taste associations.
Hailey Bieber's beauty brand, Rhode, uses food-inspired product names—like Peptide Lip Tint in Cinnamon Roll—to evoke flavor-based associations, making the experience more sensory and memorable. It's a greate example of taste marketing.
[[ROW-START]]
[[ROW-END]]
By engaging multiple senses, sensory marketing makes a brand feel alive, recognizable, and appealing—helping it stand out from the competition.
Sensory marketing is actively used worldwide, and this year it will become much more widespread in Ukraine—not only among physical businesses but also in online communications.
“Sensory marketing comes in various formats, each designed to create a unique experience for consumers. Depending on their needs and target audience, brands choose which senses to engage or combine multiple formats within a single advertising campaign”.
Nikol Trofimenko, Middle Content Manager at Promodo
Visual marketing is undoubtedly the most widely used type of sensory marketing since sight is the first sense stimulated in interaction with the world. Color schemes, product shapes, store layouts, and advertising campaign designs play a crucial role in attracting customers.
When it comes to the digital space, the main goal of visual marketing is to ensure brand recognition through ads, banners, websites, and social media. Visuals can include elements that are recognizable to your consumers, evoke nostalgia, or create a desire to own your product immediately.
[[ROW-START]]
[[ROW-END]]
Smell is directly linked to emotions. According to a study by Walnut Unlimited, Intersport increased football merchandise sales by 26% by adding the scent of freshly cut grass in the relevant section.
It doesn’t matter what a company sells—clothing, books, perfumes, or cars—using scents in stores and creating a pleasant atmosphere makes a point of sale more appealing. The key to an effective aroma marketing strategy is to develop a unique and memorable scent that seamlessly integrates with your branding. This helps businesses stand out from competitors and encourages customers to return for the experience.
Aroma marketing can also be used in online sales, such as scented packaging or special sachets for deliveries.
[[ROW-START]]
[[ROW-END]]
Studies show that music directly influences consumer behavior by changing their mood and purchase decisions. Properly selected music or a sound logo helps to make the brand memorable.
The main goal of audio marketing is to help customers form an image of the brand or specific product. For example, stores and restaurants use background music to improve the shopping experience.
The sound "Tudum!" from Netflix is a vivid example of an audio trigger. It is part of sensory marketing that creates an instant association with the brand. Upon hearing this sound, viewers feel anticipation, curiosity, and readiness to dive into the story. Since watching series triggers dopamine release (the pleasure hormone), the brain gradually begins to associate the Tudum! sound with a positive experience.
In this way, Netflix creates a strong psychological connection between the user and its platform.
There are many ways a company can approach tactile sensory advertising, depending on the products, target audience, branding, and language that will resonate best with them.
Consumers subconsciously consider a product to be of high quality if it has a pleasant texture, convenient packaging, and a tactilely pleasing material.
The feeling of texture or weight of a product evokes positive emotions in consumers and helps them better remember the brand.
If the packaging or the product itself has a unique tactile feature, it contributes to better memorability.
Business cards, brochures, and promotional materials can also form an emotional connection with the customer. Here, carefully chosen materials speak for you.
Physical stores use tactile marketing to create a unique experience for the customer.
For example, IKEA allows shoppers to test furniture before purchasing, so they can feel the texture, comfort, and functionality.
Brands that use unique tactile elements not only stand out from their competitors but also create an unforgettable experience for their customers, which fosters long-term loyalty and increases sales.
Gastronomic marketing is traditionally associated with food and beverages, but its principles can be effectively used in other areas. The use of taste associations is a trend for 2024-2025.
People have a strong emotional connection to tastes – the scent of vanilla reminds them of childhood, cinnamon is associated with coziness, and citrus evokes freshness.
This type of sensory branding also creates subconscious associations. Taste characteristics can be transferred to non-food products, evoking the desire to “try” them.
People love tasty things – even if they can’t eat them, they want to have a piece of that experience.
As you may have noticed in this article, we provide examples that can simultaneously fit multiple types of sensory marketing. When we think of bread or a croissant, we recall not only its taste but also the crispiness of the crust, the softness, and the aroma. All of this works on us both individually and together. This is the main advantage of using sensory marketing — it integrates into various strategies.
[[ROW-START]]
[[ROW-END]]
Interacting with customers on a multi-sensory level — through sight, sound, touch, smell, or taste — creates a strong emotional response. For example, if a customer sees an impressive visual or experiences a pleasant scent and calming music in a bookstore, they will feel comfortable and happy. The next time, they will subconsciously choose this brand because the sensory experiences have left pleasant associations in their memory.
Imagine that your brand consistently provides customers with pleasant sensations, nostalgia, and an environment of understanding and acceptance. All of this can be created through sensory marketing. Human senses are universally understood by consumers, regardless of age or culture.
Sensory branding helps increase brand recognition. Why? Our brains love novelty, and if a brand can offer something unique in its marketing communications, it will certainly stay in the minds of consumers.
For example, a bakery that fills the neighborhood with the smell of fresh bread every morning or an advertisement with vivid associations — such brands are much easier to remember. Effective use of a sensory approach helps companies stand out in a saturated market, increasing recognition and embedding the brand in consumers' minds.
Sensory Advertising in Social Media – It's More Than Just the Visual Aspect
Sensory marketing in social media works on a subconscious level to both increase engagement and push away the audience. Here are the main traps to avoid:
Problem:
In offline stores, the tactile experience is clear — you hold the product, feel its weight, texture, temperature, and smoothness. This creates a small connection, making the decision to “buy or not buy” easier. However, on social media, there is no physical contact — just a picture on the screen that doesn’t convey the sensations you'd feel holding the product in your hands.
Solution:
To compensate for the lack of tactile contact, make the product “felt” by the eyes. Use macro shots that capture every detail: the soft fibers of a sweater, the crisp crust of bread, or the velvety surface of cosmetics. Add slow-motion videos that show how the fabric gently flows between fingers or how the cream smoothly melts into skin. The more sensory cues in the content, the stronger the desire to purchase.
Problem:
Social media videos only have a few seconds to grab attention, and if the first sound is a sharp bass explosion or overly loud music, the audio effects might cause irritation instead of engaging the viewer, especially if they are watching in public or with headphones.
Solution:
To make the sound pleasant and captivating, use light ASMR effects that convey atmosphere: the soft rustling of fabric, the crackling of a fire, or the gentle sound of rain. Add natural sounds, as they create a deeper sensory connection, such as the sound of coffee pouring into a cup.
Problem:
If the content doesn’t match the emotions you want to convey, it can create a sense of dissonance. For example, cool blue tones in an advertisement for a cozy café can make the atmosphere seem more reserved and cold instead of warm and comforting. Likewise, a sterile style for advertising homemade baked goods looks unnatural since people want to feel homey comfort and authenticity.
Solution:
To evoke the right emotions in your content, it’s crucial to select colors, textures, and effects that support your product’s atmosphere. For a cozy café, choose warm, earthy tones — brown, beige, cream — to create a sense of warmth and comfort. For homemade baked goods, use soft textures and warm pastel colors associated with homey coziness. The correct selection of elements enhances the emotional connection with your product.
Problem:
Sensory triggers are not constant because their perception depends on many factors, such as cultural trends, social changes, and technological innovations. What is perceived as luxurious or emotionally engaging today may be seen as outdated or even illegitimate tomorrow.
Solution:
It’s important to continually track trends, which means not only following global movements but also testing different sensory elements — such as colors, fonts, or sounds — to understand which ones work best for your target group. This will allow you to maximize engagement and avoid using outdated or misinterpreted triggers.
Problem:
If the content looks too perfect — with excessive retouching or unrealistic colors — it can create a sense of artificiality and trigger distrust in the audience. People are used to seeing reality, and if you only show perfection, they may doubt whether the product matches what you’re trying to sell.
Solution:
To make the content look authentic, add natural elements: mix glossy shots with “live” moments that show real emotions, imperfections, or natural details. Use minimal editing to create a more human and relatable brand image. This approach builds trust and allows the audience to feel that the product is real, not idealized.
“Sensory marketing in social media is the art of creating an experience that goes beyond ordinary content. To engage your audience, it's essential not only to choose the right colors, sounds, and textures but also to consider the emotional connection they evoke. Keeping up with trends, testing different elements, and avoiding excessive artificiality will ensure that your content is not just visually appealing but also authentic. Only then can you build a deeper connection with your audience, strengthening trust and engagement with your brand”.
Nikol Trofimenko, Middle Content Manager at Promodo
Sensory marketing is effective not only for physical businesses but also works excellently for online promotion, including SMM and advertising campaigns. The more enjoyable the sensory experience, the higher the chances that a customer will recommend the brand to others.
You may also like
Choose quality and trusted services to improve the presence of your company on the Internet, and feel free to contact our UK team if you have any questions.
Prepare your website for Black Friday & Cyber Week with these 9 SEO tips. Drive traffic, increase conversions, and maximize your holiday sales.
Stay with us to learn more about what SEO for hotels is and why it is a must for your hotel businesses.
.avif)
Email preprocessors are tools that allow you to automatically integrate pre-prepared data into email content.
We at Promodo are ready to help you improve your performance across all digital marketing channels.
Get started
.svg){kind=logo}
