Traditional marketing is obsolete. To develop an effective marketing strategy you must understand how the brains of consumers make decisions.

  Traditional marketing asks the consumer what they want, in order to develop the product or service that he desires, or a strategy to sell it. However, many times the custumer does not know what he wants, he does not want you to know, or lies.

  The solution to this limitation of traditional marketing is neuromarketing.

  Neuromarketing (neural marketing) aims to understand what happens in your brain when you make a purchasing decision in order to influence it.

  In other words, the neuromarketing wants to know how to make you say yes, or I buy/need it.

  To understand how our brains respond to different stimuli, neuromarketing has used distinct techniques, such as:

• Facial coding - Mesure emotions displayed on your face,
• Eye tracking - Follows where your eyes are looking at an image
• Voice analysis - focus on your tone of voice, not what you are saying.
• Skin conductance test - (Lie detector), measures your heart rate, pressure and electric flow between fingers.
• EEG (electroencephalogram) - Detects electrical activity in your brain
• MRI - Mesures the amount of oxygen consumed by various regions of your brain

  Similarly, neuromarketing has sought to leverage the results of this type of modern techniques, with the researches of psychology and other scientific knowledge about the brain, to determine how consumers are influenced by marketing.

  For example, during the 2015 Super Bowl, about 50 volunteers watched the game from a dark office. Each volunteer had sophisticated equipment, which took measurements of their reactions. The research carried out by Innerscope, aimed to measure the emotional impact of advertising on volunteers.

  It is evident that not all organizations could pay $5 million USD for a 30-second Super Bowl 2016 ad. However, both large corporations and small companies want to know how to improve their marketing, so they are more effective in how to communicate.

How do we make decisions?

  Science has proven that we are less rational than we think.

  According to neuroscientists, the brain can be divided into 3 main parts:

1. New Brain (Rational) - Basically is what differentiates us from animals. It is responsible for logic, learning, language, conscious thoughts and our personalities.
2. Middle Brain (Emotional) - It is primarily concerned with emotional processing. Emotions are vital to understanding and communicating in social interactions. It deals with our emotions, moods, memory and hormones.
3. Reptilian Brain (Instinct) - It is responsible for your unconscious processes and controls our basic survival functions, such as hunger, breathing, and flight-or-fight reactions. Moreover, the old brain plays a major roll in our decision making.

  Our unconscious mind drives how we respond to ads, brands and products and, ultimately, drives all our buying decisions.

  Neuromarketing aims to stimulate your instincts, which are uncontrollable, to influence our buying decisions. And therefore, what makes this type of marketing, if well implemented, so effective.

How neuromarketinmakes you buy more?

  Neuromarketing manages to sell you more by stimulating your instincts using 6 stimuli, which I described below. These have been shown to have the greatest impact on the decision-making process.

1. SELF-CENTERED

  Your reptilian brain focuses solely on you, your survival and well-being. If the subject in question is not about you or affects you, he does not mind.

  Reason why it's easier to dismiss a message addressed to everyone, than one that says "you." Only by using the word "you" it becomes more attractive.

  Reason why big brands are changing they communicate in order to make you feel that it all about you, in order to get your brain's attention.

  You must not only customize the message, but also give the right message, again considering the instincts. For example, when you enter a retail store and someone says, “can I help you." Your brain translates instantly in “my store, my time, you’re a target”– that equals danger! You're likely to say no even if you need help to find what you are looking for. Your reaction would be different if you were asked, “are you looking for anything in particular?" This says, “your quest, your time, I’m here to help”– and that equals safety!

2. CONTRAST

  Before/after, with/without, slow/fast all allow the Reptilian Brain to decide. Being able to compare allows the brain to take decisions faster, while making more tangible the benefits of the product or service.

4. BEGINNING & END

  Research confirms that the beginning and ending of an event or experience alter our perception of the entire experience. In other words, the ‘Reptilian Brain’ forgets most everything in the middle.
Therefore, you need to place the most important content at the beginning, and repeat it at the end.

  Given our attention span, our brain uses the initial impression as a "filter" for how we perceive what is to follow. Likewise, the most-recent experience leaves a final impression with greater weight.

5. VISUAL

• The old brain is visually oriented and responds rapidly to images.
• The brain can see images that last for just 13 milliseconds.
• Our eyes can register 36,000 visual messages per hour.
• We can get the sense of a visual scene in less than 1/10 of a second.
• 90% of information transmitted to the brain is visual.
• Visuals are processed 60,000X faster in the brain than text.
• 40 percent of nerve fibers are linked to the retina

  In fact, we are able to quickly recognize shadows and associate meaning to them. For example, you can process images such as snakes and spiders faster than other images, because your reptilian brain warns you instantly of danger. This implies that visual processing enters the ‘Reptilian Brain’ first which can lead to very fast and effective connection to the true decision-maker.

  65 percent of the population are visual learners. One of the easiest ways to ensure that the customer store information in their long-term memory is to pair concepts with meaningful images.

  Researchers have shown that even the font in which a person receives a message can alter their perception. For example, if someone receives a series of instructions in an easy-to-read font, he/she will believe the task is easier to accomplish. On the contrary, a more complicated font will immediately help him/her assume that the task is more difficult and requires more time to be done.