A Beginner’s Guide to Neuromarketing: How to Find Out what your Customers Want, Backed by Science

Have you ever wondered why some stores are so specifically and liberally-scented that you can smell them 50 yards down the mall hall? How about why cereal companies put games and puzzles on the back of their boxes? Make no mistake—they’re not coincidentally delightful details—these are purposefully architected examples of strategic marketing based on a branch of scientific research called neuromarketing.

Neuromarketing is great for businesses and here’s why: it allows companies to fathom human behavior on a profound psychological level. For businesses, this means understanding customers and their deepest needs better than ever before to predict and influence what and why they buy.

If you’re not yet hip to neuromarketing and its attendant suite of benefits and implications, look no further for your crash course. We scoured Blinkist’s best books on neuromarketing techniques to get you up to speed on what it is, how it’s done, why it matters, and how you can start using it today.

 

I. What is neuromarketing?Where brain science meets brand architecture, where neurons meet new products—that’s where you’ll find neuromarketing. But names can be deceiving: it isn’t a new type of marketing, but rather a measurable, empirical way to study the impact of marketing and advertising on consumers.

The techniques that fall under the umbrella of neuromarketing are based on scientific principles about how humans really think and decide, which relies on a host of brain processes of which we’re mostly unaware. Marry these principles with smartly designed experiments and you’ve got an unparalleled peek into the mind of the modern consumer.

 

II. What are the tools of the trade?Measuring consumer response and behavior in a neuromarketing experiment might include any of the following:

Eye tracking experiments (measuring eye gaze patterns, say, on a landing page) Analyzing facial expressions Behavioral experiments (for example, seeing how changes in the color of a product impact a

customer’s opinion of it) Biometrics (body signal measures) that measure perspiration, respiration, heart rate, and

facial muscle movement (electromyography [EMG]) Neurometrics (brain signal measures) that measure electrical activity

(electroencephalography [EEG]), and blood flow (functional magnetic resonance imaging [fMRI]) in the brain.

And if you don’t have an MRI machine just lying around, or a scientist or six casually lounging around the office, waiting to design an experiment for you, don’t sweat it. There are plenty of books

you can use, and we’ve corralled a nice list of them at the end of this article.

III. How do neuromarketing techniques work?Methods powered by neuromarketing appeal to the old brain—the part we really listen to when it’s time to make a choice—and keep its attention with stories, questions, and appeals to the senses.

The old brain is your decision-making center. It assesses the information coming from the other two parts of the brain (the new part, which deals with rational insights, and the middle part, which governs emotions and gut feelings), and makes the call. Marketers need to appeal to the old brain if they want to increase sales. For this, knowing something about the old brain helps.

First, the old brain is interested only in its own prosperity and survival. Therefore, good marketers always concentrate on how their products will improve the lives of those who purchase them.Second, the old brain is lazy. It only focuses on the beginning and the end of something, rather than the middle. Savvy marketers also know that the beginning and end of an ad need to be bold and attention-grabbing so they get remembered.

Shaping an offer around what the old brain wants

Knowledge is power, but what exactly do you do to get the old brain to love you? In their book Neuromarketing, Patrick Renvoisé & Christopher Morin explain how to prepare your product to do just that in three simple steps:

1. Diagnose the pain. Be attentive and listen to your customer, and they will give you insight into their pain–the reason they desperately need your product.

2. Differentiate your claims. Ask yourself: What makes me and my product special, and how will it help solve my customers’ pain? Try to come up with an answer that is as concrete as possible. Maybe your unique differentiator is that your customers believe you have the most reliable product, the best customer care or the quickest delivery of replacement parts.

3. Demonstrate the gain. Your goal here is to definitively demonstrate how your product answers potential customers’ pain and adds something to their lives.Once you’ve prepped your product offer, Renvoisé and Morin emphasize that to win the old brain, you’ve got to grab its attention.

Grabbing—and keeping—the old brain’s attention One way to nab that focus is to tap into the power of story and use what they refer to as “Mini-dramas.” Describe your customer’s typical day, focusing on their deepest pain (which you identified in step one, above). Next, you show the contrast between life before and life after implementing your solution. Through this combination of pain and emotion, mini-dramas are easily memorable.

Imagine, for example, that you want to sell “toughbooks,”—nearly unbreakable laptops. Your mini-drama could focus on the devastation that your customer feels as their laptop slips from their hands and falls to the ground. Luckily, right before their laptop smashes to the pavement, they remember that there’s no reason to worry – their toughbook is unbreakable!

Another way to captivate the old brain’s is by asking rhetorical questions – questions that aren’t meant to be answered, but to get your audience thinking about something specific or to illustrate a strong point. The old brain can’t help but immediately fixate on finding an answer.

All right. Got a tactic you like? Maybe your product is ripe for a mini-drama. Maybe you could

pose a rhetorical question or twenty. Or maybe you’re ready for some wizard-level neuromarketing techniques that tug at all the senses…

Appealing to the senses

The old brain loves a multi-faceted sensory experience. Successful companies know this, says Paco Underhill in Why We Buy, which is why customers need to be allowed to touch and try out the products they might purchase. Many companies “involve” shoppers with their wares, which can be as simple as presenting products so people can see and use them in action (think the Apple store), or as full-on multi-sensory as the Singapore Airline technique.In Brainfluence, Brian Dooley cites Singapore Airlines as a shining example of a company that’s doing sensory appeal right. They’ve combined a number of sensory triggers as a means of developing their brand image and sticking in customers’ minds. Their flight attendants, for instance, are impeccably dressed in uniforms that match the aircraft’s color scheme. They also all wear the same perfume, which is likewise used in their hot towels and other services. Singapore Airlines has created a positive, harmonious, wraparound experience that appeals to every one of a customer’s senses, and the effort has consistently put them at the top of travelers’ preference rankings.

 

IV. Why you need to know about neuromarketing

For centuries advertisers had been patting around in the dark, essentially making guesses—albeit educated ones—about what might boost a brand or make a sale. Sometimes those best guesses were right, and sometimes they were wrong. But now, thanks to neuromarketing, it’s possible to gauge a customer’s real reaction without the mediation of wishy-washy self-reporting or misleading surveys. This should be reason enough for you to pay attention to neuromarketing, but if you’re still skeptical, here are a few more reasons to take note:

1. You’ll never throw away money on market research again.

Fact: most consumer choices are unconscious, making traditional surveys an inadequate tool in market research. By using neuromarketing, however, researchers can better predict a product’s success and finagle the answers that go unspoken.

Martin Lindstrom’s book, Buyology, cites a study in which volunteers watched the shows Quizmania, The Swan and How Clean is Your House?, and were then asked to rate the likelihood of watching them again later. Traditional questionnaires showed that Quizmania was least likely to be watched, while The Swan and How Clean Is Your House? were neck and neck. Brain scans, however, told a different story—one that mirrored the shows’ later performance: How Clean Is Your House? enjoyed the most success, followed by Quizmania and, finally, The Swan. Here, the neuromarketing technique told a truth consumers weren’t ready to admit about their television watching habits.

2. It will separate winning marketing techniques from the losers

Neuromarketing techniques can also help marketers purge their toolkits of tactics that are ineffective or even counterproductive. For example, had Nationwide Annuities had access to neuroimaging data, they might have reconsidered airing a commercial that featured Kevin Federline, Britney Spears’ ex-husband, working a shift at a fast-food restaurant.

The tagline read Life comes at you fast, implying that you should invest with Nationwide Annuities, lest you, too, go from riches to rags. Actual neuroimaging data from fMRIs, however, showed that the commercial was actually scaring away potential customers. As it turns out, customers felt that the ad tarnished Nationwide’s respected image . Mission, decidedly not accomplished.

3. It will give companies reliable answers about what their customers want.

In another study from Buyology, volunteers were asked to rate their enjoyment of various wines. The catch, however, was that one of the wines was presented twice—once with an expensive label and once with a cheap one. According to brain scans, brain activity flared up in the medial orbitofrontal cortex (the part of the brain in which pleasure is perceived) when participants were presented with the expensive wines. This revealed that a higher price can actually increase enjoyment of a product, even when everything else about it remains the same.As formerly noted, people’s self-reporting isn’t always accurate, and their decisions are largely unconscious. By studying how customers’ brains respond to products or advertisements rather than relying on self-reporting, however, companies can adapt their products and communication techniques accordingly—by, you know, investing in better package design.

4. It can create fans for life.

What do racecars and breakfast food have in common? Well, not much, unless you’re talking about the iPhone racing car game that Kellogg’s created for Apple Jack cereal. Kellogg’s commissioned a game in which children collect cereal icons in order to win badges, and as a side product, cultivate early brand loyalty. Once a company has managed to make their brand appeal to kids, they then want to ensure that these children stick with their brand into adulthood. Lindstrom notes in Brandwashed that people are more more likely to stick with the brands they favor in early age. Companies do what they can to ensure this, however, by targeting children with adult or teenage products as early as possible. A rather benign example is Bonne Bell, which offers cosmetics to girls as young as seven years old. Another (slightly more shocking) example is the birthday parcel that R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (the wily rogues behind Joe Camel ) sends to teenagers on their eighteenth birthday. It’s lovingly packed with coupons for their menthol cigarette brand “Kool” and CDs of new rock bands.

 

BONUS: 5 tiny lessons from neuromarketing research that you can use right now

So, now that you know what it is and why you should be paying attention to neuromarketing, it’d be nice to have an idea as to how to apply it, right? Right! We went through some of the Blinkist library’s best books on neuromarketing to pull out 5 little tips and tricks from neuromarketing research that you can integrate into your product and marketing tool kit.

1. The one they godded Shakespeare for

The hippocampus, a small component in our brains, predicts what will happen next. It does this by automatically recalling a sequence of events in response to a single cue. But when those expected results are defied? Surprise! We react, pay attention, and remember. Of course, you can use the element of surprise to your advantage.Good copywriters often leverage surprise by substituting an unexpected word in a familiar phrase. For example, instead of “a stitch in time saves nine,” they might write, “a stitch in time saves

money.” Of course, you don’t have to use words—surprising images and designs work just as well. This strategy for garnering attention is timeless; even Shakespeare used it! But in his case, he usually created surprise by misusing words rather than substituting them. He would take, for instance, the noun “God,” and turn it into a verb with a phrase like “he godded me” (meaning, he treated me like God). Shakespeare’s misuse of words increases brain activity in the reader or viewer, which, according to researcher Neil Roberts, is among the primary reasons for his work’s enduring appeal.

2. If you liked it then you shoulda put a baby on it

People who have been in the ad business know that the right picture is worth a thousand words. But what kind of picture qualifies as the “right” image? Clearly some are more effective than others.As it turns out, we really are wired to respond to baby faces, and even baby-like characteristics in adults. When we view babies, our medial orbitofrontal cortex (the area associated with emotion) goes wild just 150 milliseconds after having seen a photo of a baby.The reason for this is likely evolutionary: babies are highly vulnerable, and increase their chances of survival if they tug at the emotions of all adults, not just their parents.

3. It’s all in the gaze

If you really can’t use a baby to advertise your product (any alcohol marketers in the house?) make sure that whatever person you do use is looking at what you want the viewer to focus on. According to the Australian usability specialist James Breeze, when someone in an ad is looking at something, we’ll look at it too. If a face is regarding us, then we’ll look right back at it. However, make that face face a different object—say, your handsome headline, a product image, key information, etc.—then that’s where the viewer will direct her attention.By using pictures of people, you can motivate your viewers to actually spend time reading that snazzy copy you’ve crafted, rather than letting your ad simply become part of the background.4. Sides matter

Dr. Luca Tommasi and Daniele Marzoli from the University Gabriele d’Annunzio in Italy found that humans prefer information spoken into our right ear, so requests spoken into the right ear are more likely to be successful.In their studies, Marzolie and d’Annunzio observed people in noisy nightclubs and found that the majority spoke into each other’s right ears. When they put the theory to test, they found that they had more success bumming cigarettes if they spoke into right ears. Next time you’re at a networking event or a dinner party, sit to the right of whomever you want to best schmooze!

5. Reject and Retreat

Just as we like to pay back favors, so too do we feel obliged to match concessions in negotiations. Consider this: if a boy scout first asks you to buy a five-dollar raffle ticket, but then retreats to requesting you only buy a one-dollar sweet, you are likely to buy the sweet to match his “concession,” whether or not you’ve got a sweet tooth.That scout just earned a badge in sales with something called the rejection-then-retreat strategy. In addition to our desire to reciprocate concessions, it also evokes the contrast principle: when two items are presented to us one after the other, the difference of the second to the first is magnified. Thus, the sweet in the boy-scout example seems disproportionately cheap after the raffle ticket.