What is ASMR?

ASMR stands for the autonomous sensory meridian response. It is the soothing, tingly sensation a person might have in response to certain auditory stimuli like tapping wooden objects, typing on a keyboard, and brushing hair, among many others.

In recent years, it’s had a boom in popularity on social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Facebook, and many companies, large and small, have started using ASMR in their digital marketing strategies. While unconventional, Orange County digital marketing agencies like Drive Traffic Media swear it has proven very effective in helping expand a business. But how exactly does one start using ASMR in the business world?

How Can You Incorporate ASMR Into Your Marketing Strategy?

Thankfully, ASMR is surprisingly straightforward to incorporate into your marketing strategy. It is a very versatile type of content that fits into almost any brand—products, services, personalities, and organizations; you name it! Below are several examples of successful ad campaigns featuring ASMR and how you can use it for your business.

Using Sound to Describe Your Product

While some people use ASMR as a sleeping aid, others like ASMR because they like the sound of it. In this sense, ASMR can be both relaxing and entertaining. If you browse around YouTube long enough, you’ll find that others have started watching things they usually wouldn’t watch simply because it involves ASMR—think about a bald person watching a hair-washing roleplay or watching someone whisper-read a book you previously found uninteresting.

In the same way, you can convince people to give your product a shot simply by incorporating pleasant, tingly sounds into your video content, even if they’ve never heard of you before! There are many, many ways of doing this.

Firstly, you can use ASMR to help customers associate sounds with your brand. Below, for example, we can see KFC equating the gentle pattering of rain to the sizzling sounds of deep-fried chicken for their commercial. Now, everyone who hears the sound of rain will be craving KFC chicken!

Another way of using ASMR is by talking about your product in an ASMR-style voice. You can either describe the product or teach customers how to use it. Whatever the case, it makes for entertaining content, and you can be sure your watchers will be hanging onto your every word.
Don’t believe us? Look at IKEA’s ASMR advert promoting their products for college students!

Using Sound for Content Creating
These videos aren’t direct advertisements of your brand but are ASMR videos that use your product to make satisfying sounds. You might have seen some of these popping up on your TikTok feed, and Heck, there are even whole compilations of these on YouTube! So, if you’re out of ideas for new types of content, you can use this concept to spice things up.

For example, Mermaid Straw is a small Australian company that opened up in 2018, rising massively in popularity during the pandemic. This was primarily due to the soothing and relaxing ASMR videos they regularly upload on TikTok. Here, the owners share glimpses of their lives as business owners pack up products for shipment to their customers.

In videos like these, customers will eventually be intrigued by the products shown on the video and will be encouraged to search for them, even without telling them directly. You’d be surprised at how convincing ASMR can be!

Collaborating with ASMRtists
If you didn’t already know, people who make ASMR videos call themselves ASMRtists. Their channels are dedicated entirely to ASMR, and some of them are incredibly popular—Gentle Whispering, ASMR Zeitgeist, and Latte ASMR, for example, have over 1 million subscribers have tens of millions of views each.

As a brand, you should capitalize on this by collaborating with them. Lush did this in 2017 when they partnered with another ASMR giant, ASMR Darling. In this video, she helps promote Lush’s new line of lavender-infused products with the content her subscribers all know and love.

And you don’t need to use just popular subscribers, either! The great thing about ASMR channels is that almost everybody gives smaller ASMRtists a chance as long as they have high-quality sounds. Instead of collaborating with just one ASMRtist, you can collaborate with multiple to increase your chances of exposure. The Function of Beauty, in particular, is a company well-known in the ASMR community because of how many ASMRtists have endorsed it.

Personal Branding with ASMR
Did you know many celebrities and other notable figures have started climbing into the ASMR trend? They do it as personal branding to reach a broader audience or provide fresh content to loyal viewers who also like ASMR.

In a feature for W Magazine, for example, Cardi B explores ASMR while sharing stories about her start in the music industry, her family, and even her love for ASMR. It was a video that made people realize that Cardi B was just like everybody else behind the glitz and glamor, which made people connect to her and her brand more easily. For someone who raps extremely loud and proud, she sure can make soothing ASMR!

If you’re someone with a personal brand or just someone who wants to connect with their customers on another level, why not have a go at ASMR?