In 2022, learn how neuromarketing can help your business grow!

What is neuromarketing?

Neuromarketing is the study of how people's brains respond to advertising and other brand-related messages by scientifically monitoring brainwave activity, eye tracking and skin response.

It’s becoming increasingly complex and challenging to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Wouldn’t it be great if small businesses and marketers understood how people think and make purchasing decisions? This is possible through the science of neuromarketing.?

Neuromarketing combines neuroscience, social psychology, and market research to inform advertising, product design, pricing, design, and other decisions.

Neuromarketing is not a new concept. Large companies heavily rely on neuromarketing for sales, go-to-market, and advertising strategies.

But this elusive science is no longer exclusive to a select few businesses. Marketers and small business owners can also use neuromarketing to improve their strategies and grow their businesses. These neuromarketing techniques are used to study the brain to predict consumer decision-making behavior. It's also possible to use neuromarketing to try to manipulate consumer behavior.

Marketers use neural and other physiological signals to gain insight into customers' motivations, preferences and decision-making processes. They also use this research to predict how a particular product, service or marketing campaign will perform.

What is neuromarketing used for?

Neuromarketing is used in a variety of ways. In 2007, a team of scientists from Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University and the MIT Sloan School of Management used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study what peoples' brains do when they are making buying decisions. By using brain imaging to watch which neural circuits lit up or went dark during the buying process, researchers found they could predict whether a person would buy a product.

The results of neuromarketing research can be surprising. In his 2008 book, Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy, Martin Lindstrom documented a three-year study, starting in 2004, that included the following findings:

• Warning labels on cigarette packages stimulate neural activity in an area of the brain associated with craving -- despite the fact that subjects said that they thought the warnings were effective.
• Images of dominant brands, such as the iPod, stimulated the same part of the brain that religious symbols activate.
• An image of a Mini Cooper activated the part of the brain that responds to faces.

Some ways neuromarketing is used include the following:

• product design testing;
• user experience testing;
• A/B testing to compare the effects of similar ads;
• optimizing a call to action, such as "Visit our website";
• assessing the neural impact of images in an advertisement; and
• rebranding campaigns.

Neuromarketing mitigates the conscious and subconscious gap, allowing brands and marketers to understand decision-making triggers, motivations, and patterns.

Neuromarketing derives data methods and tools that track and measure people’s unconscious reactions. This data reveals more about customers’ preferences, desires, and attitudes than typical and controlled responses from questionnaires and supervised interviews.

So, continue to do market research, but supplement your research with data from studies that can help you improve your marketing and advertising.

Every business owner and marketer wants the ability to read the minds of their customers. Neuromarketing makes that possible.

Use the neuromarketing principles we shared above to create better content, design better websites, inspire better product designs, and provide a better customer experience.