How NeuroMarketing Can Help Your Business
The makings of our brain, the most important organ of our body, had been a mystery at one point in time. How we think, what triggers emotions and more still hadn’t been figured out. Then, a new wave of technology swept over, and got to the inner workings of our brain. Companies could then use this technology to figure out what the customer prefers in design, packaging etc. It’s an amazing science, that honestly isn’t being used as much as it should be.
I believe that neuromarketing is useful to a business because it gives the company valuable details about their target customer, it helps them customize their offerings, and it gives them insight into what forms of marketing should and should not be used.
What is Neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing uncovers what our brains really want from us, and enables companies to deliver that.
To start, let’s look at two different companies:
Company A: This company uses traditional marketing tactics, designs their product according to what the company executives want, and uses dead forms of advertising.
Company B: On the other hand, this company uses new tactics to find out what the customer really want and feel and chooses marketing techniques and tactics based on their findings.
Which one is more likely to become big and successful?
You know the answer.
Here are some of the different ways businesses have used Neuromarketing:
1. Frito-Lay:
Frito-Lay, one the leading companies in snacks, used NeuroMarketing to restyle their design for their chip bags. They discovered that a design of matte bags with pictures of potatoes evoked a positive response. Their current one, shiny bags with pictures of chips, had evoked a negative response. They then proceeded to change their design, and the rest is history.
2. Paypal:
One of the leading companies in online paying, Paypal used NeuroMarketing to change their ad campaign completely. Ads that focused on speed and convenience triggered a higher response than what they currently had. Based on these results, Paypal changed their ads and again, the rest is history.
Examples taken from NeuroMarketing 101.
It works everywhere:
Here is an example from an unlikely place: begging.
Note: I chose this example only to show the applicability of NeuroMarketing everywhere and anywhere.
Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin, in their book NeuroMarketing, show a real world application of NeuroMarketing. Renvoise, going out for a meal, sees a homeless man with a sign, “Homeless. Please Help”. Instead of doing what many others would do (give a dollar or two), Renvoise decided to help the man a lot more than just that. He gave the man two dollars if he could change the message on his board. Also, if he was still there after Renvoise exited the restaurant, he would get 5 more dollars. The man heartily agreed, so Renvoise proceeded to change the message on his board.
After eating, Renvoise went back out to see that the man would not take the extra 5 dollars. In fact, he wanted Renvoise to take 10 dollars.
Why?
Because, he had gotten 60 dollars in the time that Renvoise spent inside.
How did this happen?
Renvoise simply changed the wording to:
“What if you were hungry?”
As people were going into a restaurant, they could easily resonate with him, and would be more inclined to give him money.
You can get the rest of this book here.
Neuromarketing allows us to do so much more with our businesses. It allows us to:
1. Gain Valuable Details About the Customer
Because of neuromarketing, businesses can find valuable information about their customers. For example, it allows us to find out that a customer’s purchasing decision happens only in two and a half seconds and 85 percent of the time, their brain is on autopilot. Also, in the absence of logic, emotions control them. Had we not used neuromarketing, we would not have found out this information.
2. Customize their Offerings
What if your business could tell what type of packaging works better? What if you could tell which design works better? Well, that’s one of the things that neuromarketing can do. It gives you an advantage over your competitors, an advantage that can be used greatly. Companies like Google and Frito-Lay have used neuromarketing successfully in the past, and their results speak for themselves. Neuromarketing had to have some sort of impact on what went to the public.
3. Stay Away From Marketing That Does Not Work
If your company is heavily focused on direct mail but not seeing results from there, there is no point in continuing to invest in that channel. It doesn’t make sense to put valuable resources that could be put to use in much better ways. NeuroMarketing forces marketing teams to get feedback on their campaigns from customers so they can eliminate everything that does not work.
About Sumukh Setty:
Sumukh is a budding author (First Book: What We Wish We Could Do At School). You can follow him on Twitter at @SumukhSetty.
Image courtesy of Hands Off My Pho
