Did you ask yourself “what is neuromarketing” before opening our blog? If yes, let’s first figure out what it’s all about.
What is neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing is a tool to influence consumers by combining the elements of traditional marketing with techniques that affect neural connections in the human brain including methods like eye-tracking, analysis of facial expressions, daily experiments, and more complex techniques such as measuring body/brain signals (sweating, heartbeat, breathing), recording the electrical activity produced by skeletal muscles (EMG).
Neuroscience | Marketing defines it as mentioned below:
“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 other words, brands use this form of marketing to understand how our emotions and subconscious mind affect our brain, behavior, and ultimately, buying decisions.
In reality, this field has both its complex and easy-to-implement aspects. You can’t get a precise understanding of how your campaign will perform until you learn how to apply neuromarketing methods to that particular case. But there are also some proven tricks that will help you get on the right track without big, expensive studies.
If you are ready, let’s understand which companies use neuromarketing and how you can do it for yourself:
1. People buy brands
Coca-cola and Pepsi are fierce rivals in the soft drink industry. And you are probably aware of the study that researchers conducted to find out which brand people prefer.
During the blind testing, people said that Pepsi tastes better than Coca-Cola. But when they were directly asked which product they love, most of them answered “Coca-cola”.
This famous study tells us that our connection with a certain brand makes us prefer their products even though there are more quality or tastier options in the market.
2. Colors can become game-changers
Whether you work on your landing page or an ad design, changing a single color or even a shade can cost you thousands of dollars.
Back in 2014, Google tested 40 shades of blue to understand which shade drives a higher number of clicks on search results. In case of Google, one shade of blue brought an additional $200 million to the company.
SO, the simplest answer to how to apply neuromarketing is – test colors, headlines, and any elements that can boost conversion.
3. Brand awareness campaigns are worth the money
Even if people don’t buy your product/service when they see your ad, it has the chance to take root in the human brain. And when they need a product/service similar to yours, your ad appears in front of their eyes.
But showing an ad isn’t enough to get remembered. It should be memorable, personal, contrastable, emotional because you are competing for attention with hundreds of advertisers every single day.
4. Associations make people feel familiarity
We already talked that showing ads are worth only when you know how to make them memorable. One of the best ways to do it is to arouse associations with famous phrases. Let’s look at real-life examples:
“City never sleeps” is a sentence that is used to describe New York. When Citibank wanted to announce the installation of 24-hour ATMs, it created the slogan “The Citi never sleeps.”
Thus, the bank replaced “city” with “Citi”, the bank’s name, and showed that it will be serving its customers without breaks.
Another example you have definitely heard is “Donut worry, be happy”, the slightly tweaked version of “Don’t worry, be happy.” Well, this isn’t a slogan of a donut company but that would make a perfect association among the buyers.
It’s impossible not to remember these tweaked slogans as they contain both familiarity and something new in them.
5. Make people choose between multiple options
Another option for learning how to apply neuromarketing methods is making people choose between multiple options. When you visit a store and see only one type of candy, you think about whether to buy it or not.
But when there are various options, you think which one to choose. And usually, we buy the one with a price somewhere in the middle – not so expensive and not so cheap.
Give people options, though not overwhelm with them. This refers, for example, to SaaS pricing pages. When you have tens of pricing plans, you confuse people and they don’t have time to explore and pick the perfect plan
That’s why it’s often recommended to SaaS companies to have 3-4 pricing plans and emphasize the “Recommended” or “Most popular” plan among them. All these tactics affect how people feel about your plans and how they make a decision.
6. Be selective with your prices
You have probably heard that prices ending with 9 are common in contemporary stores. Instead of mentioning “30”, businesses usually mention “29.99” or you may even encounter prices like “14.78” and similar.
The thing is that 29.99 seems a smaller amount compared to 30 as the first option starts with 2 and the second one with 3.
Since 3 is bigger than 2, people think it’s a more convenient deal and don’t pay attention to the fact that the difference is only 0.1 cents.
7. Build trust through third-parties
Whether you insert customer testimonials and reviews on your website or promote your brand with the help of an influencer, you have the chance to “persuade” people to buy from you.
It’s not because customers get a detailed analysis of what you do, how, and why and decide to trust you. That’s because we get informed that people are liking and recommending your product/service and start to behave like them.
8. Visuals do the hard job
Digital marketers recommend using visual elements on your social media, website, and your blog articles. It’s not only for diversifying your content types but rather a way to grab attention quickly. Simply said, it’s another way of learning how to apply neuromarketing.
When we see a whole bunch of texts in front of us, we don’t hurry to read it all. But when we see a colorful image or the video starts auto-playing, it becomes easier to concentrate.
Ready to reach the minds and hearts of your customers?
Not all companies can afford millions of dollars to test campaign variations, scan human brains, and observe different options for how to apply neuromarketing techniques to their fullest potential. But you still can follow the tricks mentioned above and apply them carefully in your marketing strategy.
The Andava team is ready to help you redesign your website and create ad campaigns that will consider all the known nuances of human buying behavior.
