Neuromarketing: What You Need to Know
Neuromarketing: What You Need to Know
Neuromarketing uses behavioral and cognitive science to evaluate consumer response to marketing stimuli in a market research environment. According to today’s needs, paying attention to this science in marketing and advertising is very effective and essential if you have a business If you are struggling with its development, make sure to value this topic in marketing and get completely familiar with the concept of neuromarketing. To understand neuromarketing, we need to know how it works, what it is used for, and why in advertising. Modern is essential.
Neurological marketing
NeuroMarketing or neuromarketing, called nerve-based or nervous system-based marketing, is a new science that combines the two sciences of marketing and neuroscience, which was first proposed in 2002 and was not well received until recent years. It has been noticed.
Neuromarketing is the application of neuroscience in commercial marketing research to study consumers’ cognitive and sensorimotor reactions to specific stimuli often associated with the likelihood of purchasing a product or service through a marketing message.
This type of marketing is all marketing operations done according to brain function and neuroscience.
Neuromarketing is based on traditional marketing; combining old materials with new methods to get the best results is better.
The purpose of neuromarketing is to convey marketing messages to others better and increase the likelihood of purchase by the audience, which reduces marketing and advertising budgets; and also aims to collect experimental data using neuroscience techniques to understand consumer behavior better. And develop more effective marketing campaigns and products. Neuromarketing researchers apply biometrics to the traditional focus group through technologies such as electroencephalography (EEG), which tracks participants’ neural responses to elements of a particular brand. Various neuromarketing techniques are used to acquire and decode brain data to reveal the unconscious consumer decision-making processes.
How did neuromarketing come about?
Big companies used to conduct market research before producing a new product and make the product according to people’s surveys based on their interests and demands regarding color, packaging, type, and quality.
But the exciting thing that happened was that a new product that was exactly in line with the customers’ tastes failed; the same people who participated in the survey did not buy that product or only bought it once and returned to their previous habits. Marketers conclude that market research responses are different from their buying behavior, and sometimes contradictory.
During many tests, it became clear that you can’t always trust what customers say; Sometimes, their opinions about a product contradict their purchases, and they may not even know why they purchase a particular product.
Why did neuroscience and entering the brain become important in marketing?
To solve their problem, marketers decided to use EEG, FMRI, and and MEG, which were headsets with small and portable types installed on the head, so you could take pictures of the brain. These devices are a window for Entering the human brain and uncovering the secrets of open shopping.
These devices give information from the brain, and marketers by examining the information obtained from changes in facial expression, eye tracking, facial coding, and biometric data such as heart rate monitoring, EEG devices (measures the intensity of electric fields in the brain), The MEG device (measures slight changes in the magnetic fields in the brain) and also according to the reaction time of the person to different events; The amount of skin moisture and… can also achieve excellent results. However, these techniques are not technically neuroscientific. Because the data allow for broader interpretation – they provide less specific insights compared to measurements made by technologies such as SST and fMRI.
Examining the main parts of the brain
For better marketing in this field, it is necessary to have a brief knowledge of the brain and its functions.
The brain consists of three parts that are different in terms of cellular structure and function and affect the activity; Also, specific brain activity cannot be assigned entirely to one piece.
- New brain: performing complex and analytical tasks is the task of this part of the brain; This part of the brain controls our education, rational decisions, and voluntary actions.
- Middle brain: It is more involved in emotional matters and transmits the resulting information to the other two parts of the brain.
- The old brain: It is responsible for our main activities to maintain survival, and a critical point not paid attention to in traditional marketing is that our purchase decisions are often made with the old brain.
As a result, all our purchases are made emotionally and justified by logic.
Things that affect the old brain
The old brain is motivated by emotions: emotions are the body’s automatic responses to sensory stimuli. For example, the sound of the sea or even the smell of coffee creates feelings in us unconsciously.
The customer usually buys the product he feels better about with increasing purchase options.
Considering the five senses, including sound, a specific scent, color, and touch, affects the customer and stimulates his emotions, thus making the buying and decision-making process more manageable. For example, in the Apple company in product packaging, The sound of opening the product box was considered to create a pleasant feeling in the audience.
Also, in a clothing store, vanilla smell doubled the monthly sales. In general, using the five senses and creating an emotional conflict in the old brain will be lasting and effective in content marketing and movies with attractive images and scenes. That hurt feelings (fear, sadness, happiness) are more effective in identifying your brand.
Paying attention to the fact that the customer is often on the verge of buying and gives up, and shopping is scary and painful for the customer; for this reason, we must provide conditions for the customer to be emotionally brave and make a purchase.
Another interesting issue is that purchase decisions can change within a few seconds under the circumstances. Hence, the customer’s emotional condition is critical and can make him buy or withdraw from the purchase.
The old brain’s decision criterion is increasing profits and reducing losses: two critical and fundamental factors in our decisions are avoiding pain and gaining pleasure, and most people’s decisions are based on reducing pain and suffering and achieving comfort. The incentive to avoid pain and injury is 2.5 times more potent than the incentive to gain pleasure; Therefore, in sales talks, if we emphasize how far we avoid pain, we will have more sales than highlighting the product’s benefits.
The old brain communicates with images: 65% of all information transmitted to the brain is through vision. Often, the decisions of the aging brain, especially those related to danger detection, are made by seeing images; The optic nerve works 25 times faster than the auditory nerve.
The use of appropriate images plays a crucial role in advertising and marketing. We often emphasize only the words in marketing and neglect the pictures.
The old brain is affected by the beginning and the end: in every process, for example, from entering a store to leaving it or visiting a website until the time of the decision, the most important things that are taken into account by the old brain; It is the beginning and end of the process.
It is enough to not show enough attention to the customer in the first seconds of the sale; maybe all the efforts after that will not be able to remove the initial unpleasant effect.
The old brain understands tangible things: Familiar and real things affect the aging brain, and pure statistics and information are unattractive and do not affect buying. Using sentences that do not create a real image in the mind do not reach the old brain and ignores a lot of information.
The old brain understands the contradiction: simplicity is very important to the old brain. Anything that complicates decision-making is hated by the old brain. The old brain quickly reacts to the conflict of attention; Items that have only two options attract the attention of the old brain and make the decision process easier.
What are the benefits of neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing offers more depth and accuracy in market research than qualitative research alone. Studies have shown that data collected from neural experiments predicts future trends more accurately than traditional market research. Assessing physiological proxies for brain activity circumvents deficiencies such as incomplete recall and participant dishonesty. Whether due to pressure to please or embarrassment, consumer responses are not necessarily an accurate representation of the brain’s actual response. One of the biggest benefits of neuromarketing is the ability to better understand consumers’ decision-making process with less influence on those decisions due to brand, style, product, market, genre, etc. talents.
5D marketing
As we mentioned above, one of the important motivators of the old brain are emotions, which are closely related to the five senses. Now, how to involve the five senses in marketing operations?
Although digital marketing is very practical and used these days, and advertising and marketing on the Internet are important, but in traditional methods, methods that involve emotions were always used in marketing, now these issues are due to progress Technology and new marketing activities are more visible.
Today’s businesses on the web and the Internet are trying to introduce their business and attract loyal and long-lasting customers by involving factors that affect our emotions. For comprehensive information, you can refer to digital marketing and content marketing articles. In this context, in order to start your business activities, you need to be very careful in choosing the right type of server and hosting for your business, which plays an important role in the progress and future of your business.
Although sound and visuals are often used in advertising, people can also react to smells, things they touch, such as product boxes and tastes. They can associate each stimulus with different feelings or experiences. Often, marketing operations are two-dimensional, that is, only sight and hearing are used, but with neuromarketing, you must be able to influence the audience’s five senses.
Use of voice
A study conducted at University College London’s Department of Experimental Psychology investigated whether audio or visual content elicited greater user engagement, concluding that audio elicited stronger reactions. Participants presented with both the audiobook and video portions of the intense scenes rated the video portions as more “engaging,” while their physiological responses indicated that the audio portions were more engaging, based on heart rate readings, temperature, and elevated skin conductance.
Sound also has the power of association and high impact, have you ever noticed that an effective sound always accompanies sensitive and decisive moments in movies. How much does it change in you?
As a result, the factory’s product has created a stronger relationship with its customers through image, sound and touch. A familiar example is Nokia, which in the past years marketed with its own ringtone, although now Nokia has lost its market lead. But still, when we hear the special ringtone of the Nokia phone, we immediately remember Nokia.
Even putting pleasant music in the environment or on social networks to introduce your business can increase the probability of making a purchase decision, a study in the European Journal of Scientific Research has shown that loud music makes people move faster in the store. , but softer and quieter music increases the time spent in the store. Pop music with a slow rhythm makes impulse purchases more likely.
Color and appearance
It is very important how our products convey to the audience when they see them. Many companies underestimate the importance of packaging. information transmitted through vision; It has a significant impact on how the audience feels about your product or service.
Choosing the right color is also important. Colors can influence how we shop. The important thing is not to skip the choice of color for the work environment, product box, etc. easily and do enough research.
The important thing is that when we choose a color, that color must match the type of our products or services and we use that color as the dominant color in all advertisements and marketing items, so that after a while that color becomes part of the business identity. Be our job.
Customer model in neuromarketing
Lack of thinking: In the real world, the customer does not think much about his purchases and most of the purchasing decisions are unconscious.
Retrieving emotions: When buying, the customer retrieves the recent emotions associated with the desired product or brand.
Customer preferences: It mostly depends on the habits, opinions of others and his own personal experience of the product. The customer does not make logical analysis for his choice
Momentary decision: Often, customer purchase decisions are completely instantaneous and can change completely in a few seconds.
Changing the customer’s opinion: It is often possible to change the customer’s opinion about a product or service. For this, it is not necessary to give new information to the customer to change the customer’s opinion.
Marketing and advertising: affects the customer, but most of this effect is done unconsciously.
Conscious reminder: Reminding and getting help from memory information is done only when the customer wants to buy a certain product and the product is really important to him.
Introducing the tools used in brain scanning in neuromarketing
All the information and techniques that exist in the field of neuromarketing have been obtained through examining the brain and behavior of customers and are the result of very scientific research in this field. We introduce the tools that are used in this field in this section.
MRI
You have probably heard the name MRI a lot. MRI stands for Magnetic resonance imaging. It is a combined method of radio and magnetic waves that gives more reliable and accurate results than X-rays.
With the help of MRI, radio and magnetic waves are sent to the person’s brain, and then they are received by the monitor and sent to the computer, and finally an image of the brain is obtained. Different parts of the brain have different wavelengths, which allows the computer to provide us with an integrated image of the brain.
FMRI
In recent years, FMRI is one of the most popular neuroimaging methods. You may be interested in the mechanism of FMRI. When any part of the brain is activated, the blood flow in that part will increase and there will be a slight change in its magnetic field, which changes will not miss the eye of the FMRI scanner and it will start recording the active areas of the brain that are exposed They are raised with a special stimulus.
PET
PET stands for Positron emission tomography, which gives us physiological images through radiation emitted from positrons. (Radioactive substances are injected into you, which act as a tracer, and positrons originate from these radioactive substances.) PET, like the previous method, provides us with an image of the brain’s metabolic activities.
NIRS
In the NIRS method, it uses light absorption in the infrared range, which is a range between 700 and 1000 nm, and detects the level of cerebral oxygenation, blood flow, and the metabolic state of the brain.
Lesion study
We can consider this method as one of the oldest methods in the field of neuromarketing. With the help of lesion study, people and patients with brain lesions are studied. The purpose of a lesion study is to determine how the disease can affect a person’s behavior.
In the following, we will explain to you the methods that record brain activities in milliseconds and obtain more accurate data of what is happening in the brain; These measurements are obtained with the help of electromagnetic recording methods.
Single cell recording method
In this method, an electrode is placed in a specific brain cell and electrical activities are measured by this electrode.
When the activity of nerve cells or nerve groups is recorded, the brain is better read and understood; Because each neuron includes only one output channel, the firing and connection of which can show the processing and exchange of information in a specific area. Such studies are harmful to humans and therefore not suitable for humans. Such research is done on animals and provides useful information about the human brain.
EEG
EEG or electroencephalography is one of the methods that has been considered a famous method in this field for a long time. As a result of the activation of nerve cells, electric currents are created that have different frequency patterns, which are called brain waves.
When they want to conduct neuromarketing research with the help of EEG, a cap with electrodes placed on it is placed on the person being tested, and brain waves can be measured in very short periods of time, and this issue It is one of the positive features of this method.
The drawback that we can add to the EEG is that with this method we cannot determine the exact location of the activity of the neurons in the deeper and older parts. In general, researchers in the field of neuroscience and cognitive sciences do not consider the EEG method to be sufficient for understanding the impact of advertisements and predicting its results.
ERP
ERP method stands for Event-related potentials, which means event-related potential recording. In this method, the results of a specific event that occurred with the presentation of a stimulus are recorded.
With the help of ERP, different stimuli can be compared and more useful results can be obtained.
Meg
MEG stands for Magneto encephalography, and in recent years, due to its progress in the field of measuring and photographing the magnetic fields of the brain, it has received much attention from researchers in the field of neuromarketing.
The activities of the neurons create a magnetic field that is recorded by MEG and the results it gives have a greater spatial resolution than EEG and better define the areas that are involved.
MEG is a more suitable and better method than EEG to record neural and cognitive activities, but the disadvantage of EEG is that it cannot examine both the logical and emotional parts of the brain.
TMS
TMS or Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation is a technique based on electromagnetic induction and is used to reduce certain activities of the brain. TMS can be considered a relatively invasive method that only enters the brain up to 1-2 cm.
eye tracking
The eye tracking method is mostly used to analyze behavior and cognition, and when the subject looks at a point, eye movements are measured.
When the subject looks at the stimuli, video-based trackers are used and record the changes.
All the methods that we mentioned have their own advantages and disadvantages and each of them can be used alone or several methods together and the necessary research can be done.
What is the future of neuromarketing?
Overall, neuromarketing is still a nascent industry. Many companies operating in this space are a step behind the curve, making it difficult for industry leaders to gain legitimacy. As the field advances and technology evolves, neuromarketers will continue to demonstrate their ability to impact marketing efforts in unprecedented ways and generate higher ROI than any other form of market research. Until the rest of the world catches up, it’s up to marketers to determine which neuromarketing companies are worth investing in.
Conclusion
Some dismiss neuromarketing as useless because they see it as merely confirming what traditional marketing research has already done. If the field were to be fully mature, it might be fair to dismiss it, but neuromarketing has already found itself. Neuroscience and the technologies available for neuroscience and marketing are still developing; This makes validating existing knowledge much like validating the potential of a developed and mature neuromarketing.
The potential of neuromarketing to further innovate business digital transformation and enhance the meaning of a smart enterprise is enormous. With a deeper understanding of your customers’ needs, wants and behaviors integrated into already stronger customer profiles, the competitive advantage gained from this new dimension of customer insight is hard to quantify.
Studies have proven that companies may make more money by influencing what customers think! Marketers use neuromarketing to target themselves instead of their customers and the market. As a result, neuromarketing efforts can be profitable and effective in attracting customers at a lower cost to smaller businesses.
Neuromarketers can penetrate the minds of customers by examining the brains of customers and psychological understanding, and also by using this strategy, marketing goals are achieved. As a general rule, neuromarketing can be a very effective digital marketing strategy for a wide variety of companies.
