Introduction to Neuromarketing.
What is Neuromarketing?
To simply put, Neuroscience is a study of how the human brain works and Neuromarketing is using that study for marketing and branding. Neuromarketing uses neuroscience to reveal subconscious consumer decision-making processes. In the field of marketing, it is very important how humans make any decisions. How easy it would be to pursue any customer if you already know what drives consumers’ attitudes and behaviors? Most of the traditional methods such as surveys, focus groups assume the consumer’s behavior and they assume that people think rationally. But the reality is very different. More than 90% of buying decisions are made subconsciously. Consumers don’t decide rationally. That’s where neuromarketing comes in. How does the human brain think? The part of the brain that scientists think developed first in the evolution of animals is the old brain and it deals with survival issues like digestion and breathing; the mid-brain deals with our emotions, and the cortex i.e. new brain takes care of reasoning, logic, and processing information. It is believed that our new brain takes decisions while buying anything. But various studies in neuromarketing have proved that majorly it's our old brain that makes most of our decisions. Why the brain matters to branding? It’s fair to say that branding industry professionals have been using our knowledge of human motivation and actions to build services and promotions that cater to the right customer since the inception of marketing. We have also used these techniques to help us use the right demographics and psychographic knowledge to classify the ideal target audience. The more we know about the human brain scientifically, it will be easier to design these marketing campaigns to pursue customers. Neuroscience uses medical technologies such as functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging to study the brain’s responses to marketing stimuli.
Stages involved in Customer Persuasion.
Roger Dooley’s “The persuasion slide” defines the 4 major stages that are involved in customer persuasion. These are:
- Gravity
- Nudge
- Angel
- Friction
Gravity is nothing but a customer’s motivation. This is basically the needs and wants of the customer. This is why they sought you out in the first place, or why they’re reading your stuff, or why they signed up to get more information, and so on. It is the step where your product needs to be on the customer’s radar. There could be two types of motivators: conscious and non-conscious motivators. If you ask someone why you bought a particular phone, they will justify it by various mentioned features. These mentioned features by the mobile brands are the reason for conscious motivations. But people also buy mobile phones due to the status bound with that particular brand. These decisions are taken subconsciously. As a marketer, we need to look into more of these subconscious motivators.
Nudge is the catalyst or trigger to the customer. It begins with getting the customer's attention and it can take many forms. It could be an email, a phone call, a very visible call to action, an alarm, a popup ad. This kind of nudge triggers the desire to want any product. Any visual call to action acts as a nudge for the website visitor. Such as “Buy Now”, “Get updates” etc.
Angel is the sufficient motivation you provide to customers to do a particular thing. You can use conscious motivators, things like the product benefits, the product features, gifts and discounts, specifications in some cases, price is a conscious motivator. And you can use non-conscious motivators, things like emotional appeals, appeals based on psychology, and appeals based on cognitive biases, little quirks in the way humans think.
Friction is the problem that customers face while performing certain actions. This could happen consciously or subconsciously. Large forms, complex or unattractive UI, unwanted fields in forms, etc. could be the reasons for reducing conversion rates. These are conscious frictions. There is another kind of friction that is imaginary or cognitive friction. You may not be aware of it or maybe your customers may not be aware of it. One example of this would be the unfamiliar use of fonts on website copies or all caps paragraphs in website copies. Studies have proven that the human mind takes significantly more time to interpret all caps letters than the otherwise preferred camel case.
“When you reduce friction, when you make it easy, people will do more of it”
— Jeff Bezos
Well, your customer knowingly or unknowingly does go through all these stages before buying your product. And that is why these stages need to be studied thoroughly for better conversions.
Various Real-world Neuromarketing Examples:
— Using Effective Packaging: The sensation of being attracted to especially striking or appealing packaging is familiar to us all. Advertisers have always understood that it’s not always what’s inside that counts. In studies, customers were shown packaging with their responses recorded as positive, negative, or neutral. In addition, they were interviewed extensively in relation to color, text, and imagery.
— Colour psychology: Colour can be a powerful tool in your branding decisions. Countless companies have used color to incredible effect. For instance, cool blue is the best hue for conveying professionalism. On the other hand, red and yellow are more likely to provoke hunger.
— Ad efficiency: Three different advertisements were viewed by participants in one study, and the ad campaign that triggered more brain activity in a particular region generated higher call volumes for that company.
Many more such examples are mentioned in this blog. Also, Derek Gleason at CXL has mentioned recent research studies in his “10 Recent Neuromarketing Research Studies (and Their Real-World Takeaways)” blog.
It has been a great learning journey with CXL until now, excited to explore more. Neuromarketing is very vast, as the human brain is one heck of a complex thing to understand completely. It is very interesting to learn about the human brain and analyze responses to design advertising campaigns. Neuromarketing is one heck of a tool for conversion optimization.
