Neuro-Marketing is a research method which aims to uncover the unconscious responses of the brain to stimuli. It does this by using a range of neurological test procedures to measure how people physically react to what they see or touch or smell or hear etc.

This brain research approach application to marketing has helped marketers to understand how their potential customers respond to things such as advertisements, packaging and logo designs.

These responses to stimuli occur at an unconscious level of the mind. The research can indicate whether a response is associated with desirable feeling such as pleasure, or with undesirable ones. It is these native responses which give guidance to the real effect of a marketing message.

The advantage of measuring an unconscious response, is that it filters out any conscious biases which research subjects may have. Research subjects may also have difficulties in articulating what they experience, if they are asked.

Instant Decisions

Our human brain is a near instant decision making machine. It processes huge amounts of data from our senses and uses that information, together with past experiences to promote our best survival strategies.

What has this got to do with marketing? Well, marketing has to influence this decision making process in a favourable way by presenting the correct stimuli.

The correct stimuli are the ones which correspond to the benefits of the product or service being marketed. For instance, the risk-reward balance is one key decision making component of our brain. Is your selling proposition based on reducing risk or leveraging risk?

The Unconscious Conscious

The up-shot of a lot of neuro-marketing research is our emotions have a major role to play in our decision making process. It's not so much a case of we think, therefore we are. It is more a case of we are feeling beings, and these feelings strongly influence what we do and think.

This is as true in the business world, as with retail consumers. Given that some business buying decisions are done by groups, the emotional component can get watered down, but it isn't eliminated.

If people have to justify their buying decision, either to themselves or to others, these justifications are often post-decision rationalisations. These rationalisations are designed to make the buyer feel or look rational, as if they have just made a logical or intelligent buying decision.

Low Cost Applications

Many of the research studies in the field of neuro-marketing have been carried out by larger corporations with the budgets to pay for them. How can smaller companies benefit from this research? Here are some suggestions.

Usability Testing
If you are marketing via the internet or apps, then they have a wealth of analytics data available to use. This can be used in conjunction with the other methods below to test, and test again what people respond to.

Design Elements
There is a large body of work in the public domain, which points to what people respond to. This covers marketing design elements such as colours, font types, font spacing, packaging, background colours etc.

Copy
The words you use and how you use them matters. Web content that is easy to understand is preferred by many visitors, and they often equate easy with what's true.

Also, web copy that is you centred gets a more favourable response.

Now Please!
People prefer instant gratification to having to wait. What does your product or service do for people right now.

Low Risk
People, on the whole, dislike taking risks. What can you do to reduce or eliminate their risk? This may be as simple as a guarantee or a money-back offer.

Summary

To get the most favourable reception from customers and prospects, their unconscious factors which determine many of their buying decisions need to be carefully considered by marketers.

This can be done by keeping up to date with the latest discoveries in fields such as human psychology and neuroscience. These discoveries can be combined with on-going market testing, following marketing trends and being aware of digital technology advances.

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andcopy; David R. Durham, 2018, All Rights Reserved.
Digital Marketing Education.
Blog: http://brandrefuge.com/