Social isolation during the pandemic has accelerated the digitization of many activities, and companies have been forced to react faster to this change. With more people at home, more than 79 zettabytes of data (equivalent to 711,000 football fields) were consumed worldwide in 2021 alone, according to data from Statista. This consumption is projected to reach 181 zettabytes in 2025.
The avalanche of data that is created, captured, copied and consumed in various formats around the world, is an unprecedented opportunity for data professionals. This is especially true for marketing professionals, as it gives them the opportunity to understand their consumers better and, consequently, make better decisions in the VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex and Ambiguous) world we live in today.
In this scenario, with new technologies and process changes, staying competitive is an even greater challenge for companies. Getting a deeper understanding of your customers’ needs and behavior is essential if you want to offer more personalized products and services.
According to experts, the subconscious mind is responsible for 95% of decision-making and purchasing behavior. Therefore, this aspect must be considered when thinking about marketing strategies, media campaigns, e-commerce and any digital environment. The good marketer must essentially act as a decision architect, and be able to give a “little push” (or, as behavioral economists like to call it, a nudge), making the decision-making process as easy as possible for the consumer in their purchase journey.
One of the approaches that has gained some prominence in recent years is the use of neuromarketing techniques to improve the shopping experience. Neuromarketing is a field of study that unites neuroscience and marketing to obtain insights into consumers’ motivations, preferences and decisions. These are then used to build more effective and personalized campaigns, websites that are more focused on the consumer experience, and products/services that meet the needs of each segment.
Benefits of Neuromarketing
• Aids decision making
• Allows the development of more targeted products
• Facilitates the creation of more effective advertising campaigns
• Enhances the consumer experience
• Helps to avoid waste in marketing budgets
• Uncovers consumers’ implicit motivations
• Has a methodology with a strong scientific basis.
Some common tools for neuromarketing studies
To understand what neuromarketing is, we need to briefly look at how our brain works. Basically, according to Paul Maclean, a renowned American neuroscientist, the brain is divided into three major areas:
Reptilian Brain — responsible for instinctual stimuli, primitive emotions and basic reactions in our body, such as breathing, digestion, hunger and security.
Limbic or Mammalian Brain — responsible for more complex emotions related to the five senses. Our behavior, emotions and memories are processed here.
Neocortex or Analytical Brain — distinguishes humans from the rest of animals. For example, this is where all the logical processing and problem solving takes place.
In relation to marketing strategies, we also have to consider the reward system, which is a group of structures that are activated in our brain by stimuli that bring feelings of pleasure. For short-term or immediate actions, stimuli aimed at the limbic system are more advisable, that is, information on your website or marketing campaign with a more emotional character causes the limbic system to be activated, and the consumer to be stimulated to act quickly.
For long-term actions, stimuli aimed at the neocortex are more advisable, as more rational decisions trigger the long-term reward system. Campaigns that use more information to facilitate decision making, such as simple calculations and logical arguments, convince the consumer that their product is the best option.
The image below shows how our brain responds to external stimuli, and gives examples of tools that make it possible to identify them:
Basically, the flow can be demonstrated as follows:
Stimulus > Biological response > Emotional reaction > Decision making
The first stage of this flow can be explored by stimulating the five senses (limbic brain), generating the first spark in the purchase decision-making process. In the physical environment, we are able to incorporate sensory marketing strategies through visual, olfactory, tactile, sound and taste stimuli. In contrast, the digital environment presents new challenges and opportunities for marketers. We can work with visual and sound stimuli with a synesthetic character, improving the consumer experience.
Below are some applications that do not require a large investment, and can be used in your company quickly:
Google Analytics: one of the best-known tools in the digital marketing universe and an excellent platform for consumer behavioral insights (such as purchase journey, most-clicked banner, demographics, and the users who are more likely to abandon your product).
Hotjar: another well-known tool in the marketing universe. With this, it is possible to see heat maps of how the user interacts with your website, as well as recordings of tasks that the user performed on the website. You can also identify the stage of the conversion funnel they found difficult, and therefore didn’t follow through to conversion.
Eyequant: a tool that combines advanced neuroscientific research, artificial intelligence, and neural network modeling to simulate how users will react to your website, app, media campaigns etc.
Conclusion
Technology and processes alone do not support the growth of a business. Facilitating consumer decision-making, and improving the shopping experience using neuromarketing techniques, generates a relevant competitive advantage, increasing frequency, recency and the average ticket. The fight for the “share of wallet” has never been so fierce. With so many options on the market, it makes sense that you try to understand and simplify the purchase journey, to guarantee an ROI of breathing space between you and the competition.
Reading Tips: “The Logic of Consumption” and “Brandwashed”, both by Martin Lindstrom, and “Neuromarketing: how neuroscience combined with design can increase engagement and influence consumers”, by Darren Bridge.
Profile of the Author: Igor d’Alambert | Graduated in Business Administration from FGV, I am currently a Business Consultant at DP6. I am curious about data, and a music enthusiast, so I keep venturing between regexs and complicated chords.
