How to Drive Sales Using Sound

How sound can help your business

A great business marketing plan aims to engage a target audience, generate leads, foster customer loyalty and capture market share. While social media marketing and traditional marketing efforts can help you accomplish these goals, sound marketing can add a unique twist to your strategy. 

Sound marketing can help your business in the following ways: 

• Sound marketing fosters an emotional connection: Using sound in your marketing can help you connect with customers on a deeper level, cultivating a more emotional response from your audience. Sound, including music and sound effects, can appeal to your target customers on a deeper level than other marketing methods.
• Sound marketing helps you stand out from your competitors: Audio can help differentiate you from competitors by establishing a brand “voice” — literally. Your brand’s associated sounds will remind your customers about your business organically and may even trigger a sense of familiarity they won’t feel with your competition. 
• Sound marketing captures attention without being intrusive: Sound marketing is a less intrusive tactic than other marketing forms, such as pop-up ads that appear without a customer’s consent. Typically, customers must click on a marketing ad link or select a content piece to hear your brand’s associated sounds. You’re not bombarding them with your brand voice unexpectedly. 

Different types of sound marketing

Businesses can use sound in various ways, depending on whether they’re trying to drive sales, establish a brand image, reach their target customers or achieve another goal. Consider the following ways to incorporate sound into your marketing efforts: 

Sonic logos

Your business probably already has a graphic (visual) corporate logo, but did you know you can also have a sonic logo? A sonic logo is a short series of notes unique to your business. Consider the following unique examples of sonic logos:

• The dramatic “ta-dum” of Netflix
• NBC’s cresting xylophone notes
• The McDonald’s “I’m lovin’ it” whistled tune
• Mastercard’s synthesizer tones

Sonic logos are typically played while your visual logo is displayed in a video or television ad, helping you define and build a powerful brand. In the examples above, the sounds communicate specific moods and themes:

• Netflix: Drama, excitement
• NBC: Balanced, family entertainment
• McDonald’s: Casual and carefree
• Mastercard: Modern and digital, ready for e-commerce

Soundscapes

Soundscapes are custom-created continuous or long-lasting combinations of music and other sounds meant to set a specific mood.

For example, a resort-wear store may have a soundscape combining Caribbean steel drum music with the sounds of surf and seagulls — with a bit of tinkling ice mixed in a glass. A store selling whimsical clothing for young girls could have a soundscape with flute music trilling magical sounds.

Soundscapes can be used in retail environments, healthcare (soothing sounds to alleviate anxiety) or at events.

Music

Playing music in a business environment — in a retail store or while people are on hold for a phone call — is the most commonly used form of sound marketing because it’s easy to implement. Many stores play music from commercial-free satellite radio or use curated song lists from Spotify or sonic branding companies. Alternatively, you could commission custom music for your industry.

Considerations in choosing your sound

When selecting the right sound for your sound marketing efforts, consider what you want to achieve: 

• What emotion do you want to inspire? Do you want customers to feel secure, lighthearted or calm? Consider these questions when selecting tones or music to play at your business. Your environment’s sounds can shape how customers feel during their visit.
• What behavior do you want to influence? Most retail businesses want customers to spend more time in their stores and spend more money, so a slower tempo is best for this goal. In contrast, fast-food and fast-casual restaurants benefit from quicker table turnover, so a more upbeat tempo will help create a fast-paced environment.
• What music is appropriate for your audience? The music you’d play in a store for teens would be wildly different from what you’d play in a bank’s private waiting area. Consider your customers’ music tastes and decide what emotion you want your musical selection to evoke. 

Joel Beckerman, founder of Man Made Music and author of The Sonic Boom: How Sound Transforms the Way We Think, Feel and Buy, is a composer who helps businesses build sonic brands. He says small businesses — from marketing companies to corner grocery stores — can use sound to cement their brand in a specific industry while setting them apart from competitors. He offered the following tips to help businesses create an effective sound marketing strategy.

1. Choose distinct and memorable sounds.

Use sound to differentiate your business from competitors. Beckerman says that if your competitor plays a specific type of music in their store, play something different. “Play something that is thoughtfully geared toward two things: differentiation so that you sound different than all the other [competitors], but even more important is [sounds] that are perfectly in sync with the kinds of experiences people want to have,” Beckerman advised.

2. Choose sounds specific to your business.

The auditory experience can reflect your business’s culture, values and mission. It should complement your brand and provide a fresh look into the story behind it. After all, a good story sells products and music and sounds can add another dimension to your brand’s story. 

3. Choose the right tempo.

Your music’s pace and beat can directly impact your customers’ buying habits and your store’s overall atmosphere. An often-cited study by Ronald E. Milliman in the 1980s found that supermarket sales increased 38 percent when stores played slow music instead of fast music. Researchers verified this study in 2011, proving that music does influence consumer decision-making. In theory, calm music subconsciously slows customers down, so they spend more time looking around at different products and end up buying more.

Beckerman agrees with this theory. “If you’re a bodega, let’s just say … in addition to selling a bunch of products and services that are available at the other stores, that you had the most awesome salad bar,” Beckerman explained. “You may want to play slower tempo music to have people really kind of look around and [say], ‘Oh, there’s this salad bar. I’m buying all this other stuff but let me get my lunch to go too.'”

4. Consider your audience.

When choosing a sound marketing strategy, it’s crucial to consider your audience. Who are they, what do they like and dislike and how can you play into their preferences with sound? It’s also crucial to understand the context in which your customers will interact with your product. For example, a quaint bookstore probably shouldn’t play heavy metal rock. 

Considering your audience and their desires is a critical aspect of sound marketing because getting it wrong could mean turning a customer off forever.

“When you get the sound wrong, people hate experiences,” Beckerman cautioned. “People don’t realize how grating, like, something that’s just a little bit off … is to people. Even eliminating the sonic trash from people’s lives makes a huge difference. Even before you get it right, you just don’t want to get it wrong.”

Instruments and sounds to consider

If you have a good idea of your brand image and customer preferences, it’s time to choose your music or soundscape. Some trial and error may be involved as you work to develop the best sound marketing strategy for your business and learn how different kinds of music and sound affect people.

Man Made Music provided a list of instruments and the thoughts and feelings they evoke. This is a great launch point for deciding what music to play in your store or what sounds you want to associate with your business. Consider the following:

• Strings: Warmth, scale or scope; passionate and uplifting
• Horns: Power, elegance, impact, importance, strength, honor, bravery and heroism
• Synthesizer: Modern, forward-thinking and evolutionary
• Piano or percussion: Heartfelt, emotive, personal, driving energy, velocity or anxiety
• Drums: Driving, motivating, primal and communal
• Electric guitar: Power, youthful energy and rebellion

Emotions and sounds

A study by the University of California, Berkeley, identified 13 emotions provoked by different kinds of music. Consider these emotion-sound combinations when choosing your sound marketing strategy:

1. Amused: Upbeat, high-pitched songs like “Yakety Sax” and slide whistles
2. Annoyed: Unstructured and dissonant sounds like very modern jazz
3. Anxiety: Suspenseful music with sudden changes in tone
4. Appreciative: Beautiful music, including many classical pieces, such as Pachelbel’s “Canon” and Beethoven’s “Fur Elise”
5. Soothed: The type of music you hear in spas and sounds, such as waves or rain
6. Cheerful: Upbeat to medium-tempo songs and sounds — especially those with positive lyrics, such as “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” or “I’m Yours” by Jason Mraz — and sounds like a baby laughing or birdsong
7. Dreamy: Slow, flowing music or sounds with a repetitive theme, such as lullabies
8. Energized: Upbeat music such as rock with guitar riffs, club and dance music
9. Sultry: Slow music in lower notes, such as songs by Al Green and Marvin Gaye
10. Defiant: Rock and heavy metal music like Joan Jett or the Beastie Boys
11. Sad: Slow music with deep piano sounds, such as Adele’s “Hello” or some Olivia Rodrigo songs
12. Afraid: Very slow, dramatic music; howling wind or baying wolves
13. Triumphant: Soaring, anthemic music, such as the “Star-Spangled Banner”

How to evaluate your sound marketing

After implementing your sound marketing strategy, how can you tell if it’s working? Here are a few ways to gauge customers’ reactions:

• Measure sales: Have your sales increased since implementing sound marketing? “The No. 1 thing is [to] look at the cash register,” Beckerman advised. “You change a variable and it’s like anything else in research … you see how it changes things.”
• Look at sales patterns at different times: “What’s interesting is there are different expectations for different kinds of music and different parts of the day,” Beckerman noted. Consider using customer relationship management analytics and other analytics tools to analyze sales throughout the day and evaluate if and when music affects customers’ buying habits.
• Experiment with different music: Consider experimenting with different types of music for different purposes. For example, you may want to put on fast-paced music during busy times and play slow music during off-peak hours. See how these tweaks affect traffic and sales.
• Get customer feedback: Develop a customer survey — or ask customers directly — to learn how your store’s sound affects them. Does the music you play affect their perception of your establishment? It’s not so much whether they liked your music or sound but how it made them feel. “I think that the answer is to have people explore and try little experiments,” Beckerman suggested. “Something as simple as cash register [sales] and a little three-question exit poll can make all the difference in the world.”

Using sound to boost your business

Sound can be a powerful marketing and branding tool, so it’s crucial to experiment and determine how best to use it for your business. Sound and music can help you connect to your customers and communicate your brand’s message through feeling and emotion. The best part about sound is that anyone can try to use it to improve their business.

“Everybody has a Spotify subscription,” Beckerman said, “and it doesn’t have to take big bucks to be aware of this stuff and to think about it and apply these principles.”

Sammi Caramela contributed to this article.