Neuromarketing - What You Should Know

Neuromarketing is becoming a hot topic these days. In fact for the first time ever it will feature as a topic at the Pubcon 2010 conference in Las Vegas.

Why should you care? Well, we are now using science to study the sensorimotor, cognitive and affective responses that consumers have to marketing which is presented to them. Studying this allows us to more effectively measure consumer preference without any kind of conscious or subconscious bias. You can't argue with a brain scan can you!

Neuromarketing will definitively tell us what the consumer is reacting to, from colour to sound and much, much more. If we can see which part of our brain is reacting to visual stimulus we can pinpoint exactly what kind of approach we need to adopt in marketing.

Why does neuromarketing work then?

Basically, our brain can be categorised in three ways due to the nature of our evolution over the years (we will touch on evolutionary psychology in a later blog post). The oldest part of our brain we'll call the Reptilian brain, and this is responsible for keeping us safe on a basic level (e.g. fight or flight reactions, staying out of dangerous situations, breathing and hunger).

Our middle brain deals with our emotions, memory and hormones....the kind of stuff that makes us quintessentially human! The final and most evolved part of our brains is responsible for logic, learning, conscious thought, language and personality. Logically you can conclude that our reptilian brain is the one responsible for quick snap decisions as it functions without you even realising on a conscious level.

This is why supermarkets pipe the smell of fresh bread into the store while you are shopping. Olfactory marketing triggers your reptilian brain into purchase without you even realising it is happening. As our senses are used to process the world around us it stands to reason that we can visually appeal to our reptilian brain with conventional marketing and digital media. Sometimes we make decisions quickly based on a 'gut feeling' - if we can understand why something makes us react in this way our marketing will be far more effective and targeted.

This is why we should use neuromarketing - it will help us create more effective marketing campaigns, which will have tangible results. Look at this article on the New Scientist Magazine for example which showed that sales increased by 12% after a neuromarketing experiment. This technology can even be applied to websites.

Our brain is the least understood organ in our bodies - if we can understand why consumers make choices we will be far better placed to market our products.

Posted by Dan at 22/09/2010 10:55:00