The goal of this article is to present the concept of neuromarketing, outlining the advantages and limitations of this new discipline.
The ways, in which neuromarketing can be used by entrepreneurs, shall be highlighted providing tips, in order to increase conversions.
Neuromarketing is a discipline aimed at discovering the functioning of our purchasing behavior and how this can be influenced by the purchasing phase of consumers, or while watching a commercial or contacting a brand.
According to the International Journal of Psychophysiology, neuromarketing is:
„Applying neurological methods to analyze and understand human behaviors regarding markets and marketing exchange „.
The techniques used by neuromarketing are the result of the intersection between marketing and scientific-psychological disciplines: avant-garde methodologies combined with artificial intelligence.
Among the favorite tools: brain imaging (the mapping of brain activity), eye tracking (the study of eye movement to understand where the gaze falls or to analyze the dilation of the pupils in response to certain stimuli), the Facial Action Coding System (useful to analyze the movements of the muscles of the face).
Human faces, in fact, are the first elements that express the synthesis of emotions, memories, and sensations. This is why neuromarketing focuses its focus there: because it is able to trace our experience there, which then goes on to build tastes, preferences and, consequently, purchases.
Apparently, 90% of a purchase decision is taken unconsciously. In Buyology, Martin Lindstrom indicates that during the purchase decision, our brain collects an incredible amount of facts, memories, and emotions in a quick response.
How to use Neuromarketing for e-commerce?
The answer lies in the intersection between sensory marketing and experiential marketing.
Companies can use Neuromarketing exploiting associations. How can you activate these associations?
Through the senses, transmitting emotions and offering a type of experience to your customer that gives added value, such as a certain perfume in a store, soft light in a bistro, the volume of music in a bar or in a luxury restaurant.
And for an e-commerce, how can you adopt neuromarketing strategies?
Show your logo, show your products in order to create associations between your product and your brand.
Stimulate senses: more senses are positively stimulated, more positive associations are generated. It is important to provide users who buy on an online platform a sense of security: consider that they are buying an intangible asset at the moment, a service or a concrete product, they are giving you trust.
So you have to offer your client a sense of calm, tranquility by focusing on the user experience: friendly-usability, UX experience, UX writing, and Color Psychology.
When we buy online we need to easily find the information we are looking for in order to complete the purchase.
If the customer does not find what he is looking for, he can easily switch to another e-commerce given the great competition.
In any „physical” store, if you are looking for information and cannot find it, you can ask a salesman; online, unless there is an instant chat, the user is alone. Therefore, you must be able to predict the behavior of those who visit your online store so that you can continue your potential customer in his purchase with extreme ease.
- The layout of a landing page, for example, must be structured in order to convey the user to the call to action: clear, simple, visually appealing with little text.
- In SEO you must know the precise Keyword in order to attract the reader with the identification of the right techniques of Copywriting.
- Also, the heat maps of the websites allow tracing, with colored spots, the most viewed areas of the websites. Color maps are also used on websites to analyze the results in the most clicked SERP.
However, this type of marketing must be adapted to the product and to the target audience.
The crossover of marketing techniques with scientific-psychological disciplines allows you to monitor what happens in the brain.
What are the limitations of Neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing can tell us how the brain reacts through intelligent statistics and insights, but neuroscience is a nascent field and still has a long way to go.
Despite the promise and progress of neuromarketing, it is not easy to translate the deep responses of our brain into concrete marketing moves.
Neuromarketing cannot tell us exactly what to do, what slogan to use, which call to action works best or how to structure our newsletter.
Neuromarketing can simply tell us what stimulates which part of the brain. However, it is not predictive but suggestive: it suggests that in some cases, according to some research, in some people, under certain conditions, the one implemented proved to be the best choice.
We do not know why, Neuromarketing can tell us just what happens in the subject’s mind.
So Neuromarketing can suggest but not predict.
Neuromarketing is expensive, only large companies can afford it at the moment.
Humans are unpredictable and irrational and therefore they are not always a valid indicator of the success of marketing.
One of the marketing challenges is certainly demographic segmentation, although neuromarketing can perform searches at the primary level, the amount of variation between different people is likely to distort the results.
Although Neuromarketing possesses complex and cutting-edge tools, there are some aspects of human behavior and decision-making that we still do not know how to measure or explain.
Conclusion
The application of these psychological principles becomes indispensable for e-commerce sites in order to stand out from the great mass of competitors.
Neuromarketing studies how the human mind works and the results of these studies help persuade people. But these techniques should not clearly manipulate potential customers and visitors to the website.
Neuromarketing used sensibly, can help you to improve conversion rates, to grow your business and to increase revenue.
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