Neuromarketing: What it is and how to apply it in business marketing?
Playing mind games, is it? Well, not really.
Neuromarketing is when neuroscientists and marketers join hands and conduct an experiment where they show willing participants adverts and monitor brain signals to discover the part of the advert that works best. Of course, when simplified like this, it all sounds sinister! Which is one of the reasons why brands and marketers avoid addressing it.
When it comes to neuromarketing, there are two sides to the story. One side claims it’s all glitter and no gold and the other side appreciates the science behind it and chooses to apply it to marketing practices. To be able to truly benefit from neuromarketing, it is important to accept that at its core, it is all about consumer psychology.
In this article, instead of pondering over the adverse effects, we will focus on how certain neuromarketing principles can be applied to your practice as a marketer. And you may realize, you’re already indulging in it.
Simplifying the concept of Neuromarketing
The basis of neuromarketing is to simply appeal to the reptilian brain. What’s that? It’s the part of your brain that makes you do all the primal stuff such as eating, sleeping, attempting to reproduce, etc. This part of the brain is relatively less developed compared to the ‘middle’ and ‘new’ brain, and it pulls the trigger for most of the decisions that we make. And neuromarketing works best when you appeal to this reptilian brain.
So, now how does this old lizard mind work?
- It responds to concise input: It can’t process complex language all that well. So, the simpler the communication, the better.
- It is emotional: Head of the Neuroscience Department at UC Irvine is Antonio Damasio puts it aptly, “We are not thinking machines that feel, we are feeling machines that think.”
- It is a bit selfish: This part of the brain is all about ‘Treat Yourself’. It favors decisions that are most beneficial to you and you only.
- It cares more about beginnings and endings: The most interesting bits of the communication is all that it cares about; the middle stuff not so much.
- It like visual stimuli: Our brain is hardwired to make decisions based on what we see. Visual stimuli are better processed than auditory nerve input.
Understanding these basic principles can make a stark difference in your marketing communications. So, now that we know the basics, how do we apply it to business?
How to use neuromarketing in business?
1. Trust them to gain their trust
A simple example of this would be giving your customers a month’s free trial of your service without asking for their credit card details. Free samples of products also help. Once they start feeling trusted, they start trusting you.
2. Use attractive colors and simple language
Ensuring that you pick typefaces that are plain, have a consistent width and don’t contain a lot of accents works better than something that’s too jazzy. Go for sans serif instead of a serif font. The easier you make it for your reader to consume your content, the better it’ll be for your advert.
3. You can use multi-sensory stimulation
Instead of making neuromarketing tactics work independently, make them a part of your overall brand strategy to change perceptions of your company. New Neuromarketing explains this beautifully:
“expectation is the driver of success. The first glimpse of a product will set expectations of the form, the material, the smell. If these expectations do not come true (the expectation does not match your sensory input), you will be surprised by this sensory mismatch. This has an impact on the product experience: when the experience with the product exceeds the expectation, consumers will often evaluate the experience as positive, if the interaction falls short the experience will often be viewed as negative.”
4. Tell the viewer what to do
For example, if you want the consumer to look at the shoes, you can show an advertisement of a woman looking at a pair of shoes. These kinds of subtleties are something that you can incorporate into your advertising campaigns. When you put a call-to-action and highlight it, you make an effort to ensure that it’s visible and that people click on it. That’s you paddling through neuromarketing right there.
5. Give limited options to avoid decision paralysis
There are times when having a lot of choices is a good thing, because who doesn’t like options? But then there are also people who are unsure of what they exactly want. When they see a massive list, they experience what you call a ‘decision paralysis’. So when it comes to options, less is more.
6. Conduct A/B Testing
As marketers, you have to test your strategies and ideas to be able to gauge what works and what doesn’t. With respect to neuromarketing, when you put out a campaign you can test the language, the colors, the checkout steps, etc to see which options your consumers respond well to.
7. Tell engaging stories
One of the best ways to get someone hooked is to tell them a story. In a world where everyone is pushing their promotional messages, standing out by telling a story can help consumers develop a positive association with your brand. In the online world, every piece of your communication should tell something important.
For instance, as a website your main identity — your domain name should communicate something. The way to do this is to use brandable domain extensions such as .TECH, .STORE, .PRESS, .ONLINE, .WEBSITE, .SPACE, etc. They add more character to your brand name telling consumers what your business is about. The more creative you are with your brand aspects and the effectiveness with which you communicate them can make all the difference.
Wrapping up
All of these strategies are something you can test when it comes to paying close attention to consumer responses. The way you choose to display certain things on your website also has a significant impact on a consumer’s buying decision. You can always measure their engagement and draw conclusions on the effectiveness of your marketing materials and the website. And when it comes to small and medium businesses, this is as far as neuromarketing can go to make an impact.
