What is Neuromarketing and how can you use it for your advantage?

what is neuromarketing
Jan 07, 2021

The marketing landscape has continued to evolve with time due to technological advancements. In today’s world, most marketeers have mastered to automate customers’ engagement through technology, either with artificial intelligence or by using experimental marketing. These brands are augmenting customers’ interactions using the newest breakthrough in science and technology.

Now let’s talk about what neuromarketing really is and how it has transitioned marketing into an application of cutting-edge technology. Let’s break the initials to get better insights into this technique. The word neuro means brain and marketing refer to the activities to promote the selling of a certain product or service.

By definition,

“Neuromarketing is the application of neuroscience to marketing. Neuromarketing includes the direct use of brain imaging, scanning, or other brain activity measurement technology to measure a subject’s response to specific products, packaging, advertising, or other marketing elements. In some cases, the brain responses measured by these techniques may not be consciously perceived by the subject; hence, this data may be more revealing than self-reporting on surveys, in focus groups, etc.”


Neuromarketing insights can be applied to a broad range of contexts. Either in stores or online; in restaurants and in television commercials. In the purest sense, ‘doing’ neuromarketing would mean conducting research into how the consumer’s neurological system responds to marketing stimuli. Brands target reptilian brain through neuromarketing to let them say “BUY” or “YES”

Some techniques to measure consumer buying patterns in neuromarketing are

  • Face coding – Measuring of emotions displayed on the consumer’s face. 
  • Eye-tracking – Figuring out where exactly the eyes are looking at the image
  • Voice analysis – Not measuring the words they are using, instead of paying attention to the tone
  • Skin conductance – Measuring the heart rate, blood pressure level, and much more.

The 6 Neuromarketing stimuli that speak to the brain are

Contrast

Contrasting for instance before and after, day and night, black and white, and much more. These are value propositions that are been understood by the brain, at first.

See the above ad, without reading the text you can clearly understand the positioning of the brand by contrasting before and after. They are communicating that after using their product you can get as shredded as the person in the second image.

Self-Centered

A great strategy to maximize customer attention is to use self-centered phrases – in which you talk through redirecting them. Advertisers use this type of technique to intimating one-to-one relationships with the customers. For instance

“Drive your dream” this phrase triggers you into thinking that this is your dream and you have been looking for this.

Tangible Input

“Since the old brain is not qualified to process written language, the use of words – especially complicated ones – will slow down the decoding of your message and automatically place the burden of information processing onto the new brain…(The brain) is constantly scanning for what is familiar and friendly, concrete and immutable, and recognizable. The old brain cannot process concepts like “a flexible solution,” “an integrated approach,” or “scalable architecture” without a great deal of effort and skepticism.”

A picture is worth a thousand words. Yes, you heard it right. A success branding is the one which simplifies the user experience, doesn’t make users to think a lot and advertise ideas by having clear, concise and attractive heading, making it simple, familiar and tangible, for instance:

Or like this

The Beginning and the End

It is being analyzed and evaluated by neuro marketers that the human brain focuses more towards the beginning and the end of the product, which gains the most visual attention. Also, the beginning and the end are the stimuli, which is likely to be remembered after a long time. Marketers advise companies to make attractive packaging and place their marketing crops to create recency and brand recall.

Here’s an example of when Chubbies sent a well-designed and funny packaging with some gifts and a letter…

These techniques are also practiced in the movies, where they show beginning with a scenic view.

The last customer touchpoint is the most important aspect of this technique. Create an everlasting experience.

Placing the most important content at the beginning is a must and repeating it at the end is the essence of these stimuli.

Visual Stimuli

Creating an attractive visual to disrupt people’s attention creates a lot of difference and it works! While seeing an ad or a website, visuals are the one which gets the most eye, creating the initial impressions. It’s been shown that it only takes people 50 milliseconds to judge whether or not they like a website. Google research showed many decision judgments only took users 17 milliseconds to form. Here are a few of the examples:

Visuals also evoke taste buds. From colorful graphics to interactive videos, food industries spent thousands of dollars on advertising to make you crave their food.

Emotions

Neuromarketing techniques yield some pretty compelling results. Targeting consumers with more effective ads means that you’ll better be able to engage your audience and building your customer retention. Brands that have an emotional component attached with their customers are more likely to be viewed favorably, compared to their competitors that can feel like soulless corporations.

Usually, you can apply emotional persuasion into 4 expressions
  1. Happiness
  2. Fear
  3. Anxiety
  4. Sadness  

Here is a great example of a fear appeal…

An example of some joyful appeal is here…

I hope this article must have expanded your view, about how companies cleverly use neuromarketing techniques to build brand equity that is more than Facebook Ads or Social Media blasts.

If you have any questions or any key takeaways, you can mention them in the comment section below.

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