Business Strategy and Marketing Solutions

Neuromarketing To Your Customer's Brain May Be Your Best Strategy

Personas. Target audience. Demographics. Psychographics. Keywords.

These are all important parts of your marketing strategy, and I use them religiously. But personas and keywords, for example, don't make decisions. Customers make decisions, or more specifically customer's brains make decisions.

That's why you need to market-or better yet- neuromarket to your customer's brain.

And the best brain to market to is the old brain, often called the reptilian brain.

OUR OLD BRAIN-THE DECISION CENTER
We have three brains. According to the folks at SalesBrain, the old brain is the decision maker. The middle brain processes emotions and gut feelings. The new brain thinks and processes rational data. So the old brain is our real target. It takes into account the input from the other two brains, but is the actual trigger of decisions.

The power of neuromarketing is to understand how decisions are triggered. There are only 6 stimuli that can trigger decisions:

    1.    Self-centeredness: the old brain is "the center of ME and has no patience with or empathy for anything that does not immediately concern its own well-being and survival." Therefore, focus entirely on your target (and not on yourself) and liberally use the "you and your" words.
    2.    Contrast: the old brain seeks clear contrast in order to make instant decisions and avoid confusion that results in delayed decisions. "…the old brain is wired to pay attention to disruptions or changes" such as before/after, risky/safe, with/without, and fast/slow. Therefore, to get the old brain's attention, create contrast and avoid things like neutral statements that dull contrast.
    3.    Tangible Input: the old brain prefers and scans for tangible input to avoid the extra time and energy involved in thinking. For example, easily grasped words like "more money" are to be preferred to "maximizing roi."
    4.    The Beginning and the End: the old brain tries to conserve energy (from thinking) by eliminating unnecessary content. "If the old brain can easily anchor a situation with a strong beginning point and a strong end point, it will not seek to use energy to retain content in the middle because it may not be necessary or vital to what the situation requires." The implication to presentations and all forms of communication is obvious and substantial: place the most important content in the beginning (focused on the "you"), repeat it at the end, and repeat it as often as necessary during the course of the communication to regain interest.
    5.    Visual Stimuli: the old brain prefers visual stimuli which are processed faster than words and concepts.
    6.    Emotion: finally, "the old brain is only triggered by emotion." This means that "we remember events better when we have experienced them with strong emotions." Marketers who want to be remembered should keep this in mind.

KEY TAKEAWAY
The key to effective marketing, therefore, is to use these 6 neuromarketing stimuli to trigger the buying decision described via the personas, target audiences, demographics, psychographics, and keywords you've generated. This is what is meant by marketing to your customer's brain. (Why you should put neuromarketing into your marketing strategy.)



Photo Credit: dierk schaefer via Creative Commons license with photo editing by Don Metznik
Mission: To help small and mid-size businesses sell more.