The 5 Tenets of Visceral Marketing

I woke up, dazed, to the impossibly loud vibration of a phone call from my brother. As I answered, it wasn't his usual voice – it was pained, uncertain. One word in, and an anchor large enough to stop a cruise ship fell into my stomach. The weight of it did everything it could to bring me to collapse. Somehow, I managed to stay upright, but it took more than I knew I had in me.

Then, half a breath later, a second anchor: "Mama is gone."

It was, without a doubt, one of the most difficult moments of my life. Unfortunately, without consultation, let alone permission, my brain committed an irregular amount of resources to the minutia of it all.

I remember the details of the clock that I was staring at — 5:17 am – red letters, black metal casing, slightly worn around the snooze button. I remember the texture of the hotel bedsheets: comfortable, clean… but foreign. I remember the disorienting darkness, glimpses of light fighting through from the numerous electronics scattered around the room.

Frankly, I remember much more about that moment in my life than I care to because, even though it is a hard memory, it is, by any definition, a visceral one. And in the pursuit of being memorable, viscerality is the most powerful tool there is.

The Power of Viscerality

At a conference in 2022, I told the story of this phone call during a talk about creating compelling content. I was attending the same conference and staying at the same hotel five years prior when I got the call from my brother. (The memories I have from the Loew’s Hotel could be captured in an 8-episode Netflix series. I demand that Chris Hemsworth play me.) 

“I was only going to give this talk once,” I told the audience at the start. This one was for them, me, and no one else. I stepped away from the podium, grabbed the mike and a chair, and sat before them telling this story.  

I confessed to them how difficult it was to return to feel the same bedsheets, see the same clock, and retrace steps from that morning. I opened up about how hard it was to gather myself after that call, shower, check in at the conference booth and then head up on stage to give a talk.

By the end of that talk, not a dry eye was in the room. It took everything I had to make it through to the end. Choking down waves of emotion that made me remember that morning, many years ago — and forget almost entirely about the audience empathizing with my loss.

I am telling you this story now because I want you to understand that the story I shared was so impactful because I shared the condition precedent to make this talk memorable - viscerality. I allowed myself to be vulnerable, and it gave me an opportunity to truly connect with people, to break through the constant noise happening in our lives and to build genuine connections with the people in that audience.

See, our lives are made up entirely of moments. Some of them, most of them, are mundane. But others, like a call from a friend, lover, stranger, or brother, are much more meaningful. They can bring you euphoria, happiness, excitement… or grief, pain, and agony.

Your job, if connecting with patients and building connections is something you care about — and it is something you should care about — is to find those visceral moments that happen in your practice.

Unfortunately, recognizing viscerality is not something you can pick up in passing. But I've spent a lot of time exploring the idea of viscerality and memorability and what truly makes something visceral, and I developed the 5 Tenets of Visceral Marketing to help you understand it.

Tenet 1: Emotional Resonance

If the story I just told should have illustrated anything, it is that if your content isn’t emotional, it simply cannot be visceral. Emotions are a universal phenomenon. Our triggers might be different, but the emotions we have the capacity to feel are the same. 

Watching someone’s pet get yeeted into oblivion on a trampoline might make me roll in laughter, but other people might, you know, get a little sad about it.

The basic six emotions are easy enough to identify: happiness, sadness, fear, disgust, anger, and surprise. These are also fundamentally what many pieces of advertising and marketing are looking to invoke. 

Why? It’s simple, really.

They are the easiest targets. The more emotion that they can stir, the better their content will convince you to remember their product.

Why? That’s even simpler: emotion improves memory, engagement, and connection. 

And when you remember their product, you guessed it, you end up buying their product.  

Emotion Improves Memorability

Most people writing this article wouldn’t get into anatomy too deeply, but most people aren’t talking to literal doctors and medical professionals, so… let’s gooooo. Here’s the scientific reason: emotional events activate your amygdala and hippocampus at the exact same time. 

When you trigger these two at the same time, the amygdala helps the hippocampus store your memories more effectively, resulting in a much stronger ability to recall those moments. 

There’s an evolutionary reason for this too:

Memories of emotional events are often more vivid and accurate than memories of neutral experiences… From an evolutionary standpoint, emotions offer cues that help you avoid future threats and successfully reproduce. A fond memory of your first kiss can motivate you to find a romantic partner so you can experience that happiness again. This goal, incidentally, raises your odds of having children and passing on your genes… In contrast, your first encounter with a toothbrush probably won’t offer any game-changing insight for your future self. (Healthline)

So, look, don’t argue with me; argue with science. Visceral content is emotional, and emotional content is memorable. 

Emotion Improves Engagement

If you had to guess what the most provocative emotions are, the ones that lead to the most engagement on content the most, what would you guess? If you chose anger, you’d be right. (Although shout out to Fear, for making a strong run, just not enough to last.) 

Surprise, surprise.

It’s easy to see this for yourself — browse the internet for a while and read through some comments. How many are angry? How many are overwhelmingly positive and supportive? The more drastic the emotion, the more compelled the person will be to interact with it. 

In 2020, BuzzSumo analyzed content from 10 major sources. They found that almost 35% of the “like” button presses were to express the “angry” option. The runner-up? “Love,” at 21.5%.

Unfortunately, this association is also why tactics like fear-mongering and clickbait are so effective. The content with the most reach is often the most inflammatory. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a way to invoke emotion in an ethical way. You just have to target the right emotions. When you find a worthy message and incorporate the right emotions, you are headed toward viscerility.

Hope, for example, is a great emotion to build on, and one that is easy to tackle with positive messaging.

Emotion Builds Connection

When I said that my story about my brother and mom gave me an opportunity, I meant it. Connection with anyone is a gift. If there is anything on the top of the importance list for a brand at this moment, it is creating a connection with your audience. Customers who are considered “fully connected” (to have completely bought into the brand) are 52% more valuable on average than those who are even “highly satisfied” with your business. There is no doubt I connected with that audience - as a whole - and in specific. I have heard how that talk was the most “memorable” they had ever heard, and even years later, the connection I made that day still lives on.  

Emotion is what enables that. Shared experiences are part of the fundamental human experience, and content that creates those shared experiences will outperform — by a very large margin — those who are not making connection and personability a priority.

Bad news for all those doctors out there who are struggling with their reviews and digital reputation. #justsaying

Tenet 2: Authentic Portrayal

Unless you want your content to absolutely flop like the “Live for Now” Pepsi commercial, where Kendall Jenner attempted to solve race issues in America with a crisp, ice-cold can of pop, you need to make sure that you are not only putting out an authentic image but are also living up to its mission. Because no matter how powerful or moving your content is, if it isn’t authentic, it will be received poorly and has no chance of becoming truly visceral. 

You are in the business of providing treatments to improve people’s appearance. You need to be careful and strategic about how you approach that because it is a very risky place to be. 

Trustworthiness Is Everything

You might’ve heard digital marketing people throwing around the term “E-A-T” like sales teams throw around phrases like “circle back” or “alignment meeting.” That’s for good reason. E-A-T stands for expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness, and it is a big metric by which Google decides how valuable and useful your content is to its users.

And it's that last one, trustworthiness, that the second tenet of viscerality is mostly worried about. Because when it comes down to it, being trustworthy and authentic will make or break not only your marketing program but your entire business. 

It would have been easy for someone in the audience listening to my story to think that the entire thing was a charade — a way to create some kind of faux connection. But because sharing this story, being vulnerable, and caring enough about these things to put them out there for everyone to see is part of who I really am, I am glad to say that the authenticity showed, and the audience I was speaking to trusted me.

Millennials and Gen Z (close to 140 million people) now say they prefer brands that feel “real and organic” rather than “perfect and well packaged.” 

Unless the Boomers and Gen X are rolling your entire revenue stream and you plan to retire very soon, you need to make sure you are operating in a way that is in line with what the younger generations are looking for. 

Your Reputation Is Everything

Marketers put such a high value on reputation management and reviews because they are easily one of the biggest contributors to the successful conversion of leads. We can bring as many visitors to your website as you want, but if they end up googling you and find a 1.5/5 rating — there’s not much we can do to help you close out that patient. 

There are ways to clean up your digital reputation, but it is important to make sure you are taking up as much real estate on search engines as possible with positive messaging and information about your practice.

Websites, social media profiles, medical websites and forums — the more you are active and controlling page one of the conversation, the less likely it is that bad reviews are going to stop you from getting conversions.

Of course, regardless, you need to address the root causes of those bad reviews. If you have 50 one-star reviews all saying the same thing… You will have a hard time in your quest to be authentically a caring provider.

Loyalty Is Everything 

Getting new business is expensive, time-consuming, and difficult. It can cost five to ten times more money to acquire a new patient than to sell to a previous patient. That cost is even more considerable since, no matter what, you have to keep investing in new business. But investing in and relying on are two different things.

It’s okay to invest in new business, but you should really focus on relying on repeat patients loyal to your brand.

The more loyal your patient base, the better your business will be. Current patients spend, on average, 67% more than new patients will. Why? Well, you’ve already overcome all the barriers to entry and proven you are a worthy investment — now it is just about giving them a reason to stop by again. 

Authenticity plays a big role in loyalty. On the surface, an authentic experience to what they were expecting — someone who cares about their needs, is an expert in the field, is personable and makes them feel comfortable — will make that journey back to your office much easier. 

This is why you need to make sure your marketing persona, brand, voice, and everything you put out to the public is not only well crafted but true to who you and your practice are as entities that patients will be interacting with. If you claim to be a luxury plastic surgeon but have less than 20 square meters of rare marble on the walls… the authentic experience might not hold. 

Tenet 3: Sensory Engagement 

I don’t know if its just an ADHD thing, but when I recall my memories, it’s like I am stepping back into the scene as a time traveler or Bran, the 3 eyed raven.  I can see everything around me, hear the conversations, feel the clothes I am wearing, and even smell the rain in the air.  I’ve said it once, and I’ve said it… still not enough times. viscerality is about feeling like you are in the moment with the storyteller. You want to make your audience feel like you are face-to-face having a conversation or putting them in the moment that you are presenting in your content. 

This means engaging the senses - whenever you can. Unfortunately, you will rarely be able to engage all five senses. Taste, smell, and touch aren’t in the cards for most digital content - but we always try. 

Touch might be on the horizon soon, though, with the leaps happening in virtual technology. (Looking at you, Apple Vision Pro 2.) While you may never be able to replicate the material feeling of touch, it might be very feasible soon to tap into the realm of touch with virtual tours. But I digress.

With touch being at least a few years out and taste and smell having currently unsolvable barriers behind evoking similar deep brain stimuli from your audience, visual and sound media are your bread and butter. If you are writing a blog, try to find interesting ways to include audio — historical quotes, recorded notes on your subject matter, song snippets — so that your audience can take a break from reading to engage another part of their brain. 

I've already told you the story of my getting a crushing call from my brother. But there is something about hearing it from directly for me, or hearing someone's voice talk about something that makes it feel much more engaging. Here is me telling the same story with my voice to show you the difference.
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Aside from using audio in your content, make sure it doesn’t just read well but looks good where you are publishing it. Make the font and stylization an experience in and of itself. Sites like Medium and The New Yorker have put a lot of work into the aesthetics of written content. Look at these places and emulate them whenever possible. 

As for the other senses, don’t forget about them. You might not be able to physically make someone smell the roses, but an eloquent description of a warm, fragrant cup of hot chocolate with lavender syrup will incite some kind of response in their brain. Give them the building blocks and let them fill the gaps regarding taste, smell, and touch. 

Because if viscerality is about anything, it’s about putting you in a situation where your senses are somewhere other than where you really are. You might not have been in the room with me when my brother called or in the audience when I told the story, but you were given enough detail to recreate the scenario in your own head.

I recently saw tickets on sale for a show in Los Angeles. It’s a rooftop dinner where you can take in the LA skyline as you eat. While that’s already a pretty cool experience, this particular dinner also projects a movie for you to watch while you are eating. Plus, the food that is given to you is from the movie that you are watching.

So, you can bet your ass when they do a screening that mimics the “Best of - The Bear”, I’ll be booking my tickets well in advance.

Don’t be afraid to push these kinds of boundaries in your own marketing efforts. (No, I am not saying you need to turn your Operating Theatre into an actual Theatre or start a home cooking show… you’d burn the muffins anyway ;-) 

Tenet 4: Immersion

Strap in, friend, because this section is going to be a substantial one. Immersion is your content’s ability to pull the audience away from reality and into the story itself. If you think this sounds remarkably close to the definition of viscerality, you are right — immersion and viscerality go hand in hand. 

We Are “Storytelling Animals”

Read this quote from Jonathan Gottschall:

“The brain is not designed for story; there are glitches in its design that make it vulnerable to story.”

In the book The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human, Gottschall has a conversation about whether our inclination toward storytelling is a primary function or a side effect. It’s an interesting conversation since so much cultural advancement is attributed to our ability to tell stories and recite allegories. 

But, here’s the even more interesting thing: it really doesn’t matter for our purposes. All that matters is that we understand people are hardwired to gravitate toward story.

And that’s great because, through stories, we are able to communicate feelings and emotions on a much deeper level than a simple explanation would do. 

Take your procedure pages on your website, for example. These pages are built for a very specific purpose: to hoard as much of Google’s attention as possible. You want to rank high and earn all the traffic that comes from the effort. What effect does that have on your content?

It means that the words on that page aren’t looking to tell a story; they are looking to answer a question. This is great for getting the attention of people who are early on in the marketing funnel, such as the awareness or interest phase. But when they get to the action phase, they are going to need a little more convincing. 

Sure, you could tell them that this treatment might change their lives, possibly make them happier and more confident, or shift how they feel about certain parts of their routines. Laying it out for them likely won’t do much, though.

But show them a video of someone in their shoes talking about the treatment and what it means to them? You’ll get way more mileage out of that every time. 

The Magic of Mirror Neurons

It’s important to know that viscerality isn’t some kind of ethereal, religious high you are chasing — it is, to a large degree, measurable and observable. When we listen to a story that describes certain actions or events, our brains activate a very specific brain cell known as mirror neurons.

When triggered, our brain interprets the events we watch almost as if we were carrying out those actions ourselves. If you’ve ever leaned to the side while avoiding a wall when you are racing in a video game or feeling a sting of pain when you see someone stub their toe, mirror neurons contribute to this phenomenon. 

These neurons are what make it possible for you to share the journey of a patient who has gone through your treatment and come out on the other side much happier than she was previously and have your audience feel the same feeling by proxy. When she shares her unique experiences, your audience will transplant themselves into that story, drastically increasing the likelihood that they will also go through the same treatments.

If you are worried about being manipulative here, don’t be — we aren’t suggesting you tell fiction. It is possible and ethical to show success stories while tempering expectations and avoiding exaggerated results, as long as you remember Tenet 2 and remain authentic in your approach.

Tenet 5: Compelling Stakes

I told you I’d get back to you about the conflict idea — and here we are. Conflict is one of the most important parts of any piece of content. Without it, there is no plot, no motivation, no anything, really. This conflict, or, put differently, what is at stake for the audience or the subject of the content, is probably one of the most visceral aspects of any story. 

(I would like to take a moment and examine my life, and the conflict points currently underway, and say, whoever the authors are for my specific story, really need to turn it down like a notch or two. I get it - compelling – but seriously… like seriously?)  

Let’s focus back on this digital marketing for aesthetic practices thing – Let’s say you are running ads for Botox injections, you would need to convincingly tell a story about how useful they will be, right? If you are developing long-form narrative content, the audience needs to be made aware of how aesthetic treatment could change their lives so that they can insert themselves into the narrative you are telling.

You need to shift your approach away from being an objective and rational communicator to being subjective and really understanding and empathizing with the high stakes of your patients.

These stakes are the most relatable part of any content you develop. And they need to be just that: relatable.

You’ll need to ask yourself questions like “what problems does this treatment or service solve,” “what problems are the most common among my targeted demographic,” “am I conveying a solution to these problems effectively,” and, most importantly, “can my potential patients fill themselves in as a proxy for the subject?”

Because to build truly visceral content from the ground up, we need to trigger some of the things we’ve talked about before to build stakes — mirror neurons, sensory engagement, emotional connection, etc. — but you also need to define clearly what the patient stands to lose or gain. 

You need to make the audience ask themselves questions like, “do I want to go the rest of my life dealing with this aesthetic flaw that makes me self-conscious, or do I want to solve it as X person did in this story I read?” 

That line of questioning is compelling and demonstrates the stakes you need to invoke in your content. If your potential patients don’t have your treatment, what will they be left dealing with?

Don’t be afraid to say that a previous patient of yours was also worried she’d have to go the rest of her life dealing with the changes that motherhood brought to her body. Don’t be afraid to tell your audience that they aren’t the only ones worried about getting wrinkles at 30, 40, or 50 or that there are many men out there who are also self-conscious about having a weak chin.

Those are the ideas that people will find relatable, and the more relatable, the more visceral your content becomes.

Viscerality Will Set You Free

In many ways, giving that once-in-a-lifetime talk and sharing the story with you now was and is cathartic. I value the connection I was able to make, and to this day, it isn’t something I take for granted. When you are willing to open yourself and your practice up in the same way, find and share the visceral stories that are waiting to be told, you’ll create the same connections and grow your practice immensely.

#5moreminutes