Neuroscience is a science that deals with how people arrive at decisions and make choices. To achieve this, experts in this field, neuroscientists, observe and analyze people’s brain activity as they are faced with decision-making and presented with choices.
At its core, the success of every marketing campaign lies in its effectiveness in successfully convincing potential customers to buy the advertised product. Through results from brain imaging research by neuroscientists, market researchers have identified several effective marketing strategies increase prospects and improve conversion. Here are some of them.
Fewer Options, Faster Decisions
The saying, “Less is more” is a common thing nowadays, and it also applies to marketing. Buyers want liberty. They desire the freedom to choose between products or variants of the same products. However, studies also prove that minimizing these options often result in faster buying times. If shoppers are presented with too many items at the same time, they will most likely pick the first item on the list or just walk away.
Options as few as 3 means your prospects would make a quicker choice as they have to spend lesser time comparing and ultimately deciding which product to pick. Also, you can spend less on your advertising budget and can focus better on giving your customers a better experience.
Negative Concepts, Quicker Decisions
Amygdala, a part of the brain determines how the brain responds to dangerous impulses. Activating the amygdala triggers very strong emotions, and ultimately, fast action. According to neuroscientists, people react faster and more impulsively when they are trying to avoid danger.
Hence, when people are presented with negative concepts (such as words or images with keywords like “AVOID!”, “PROTECT!” or “LOSE”), they react instinctively and immediately. Such keywords with negative implications have been proven to effectively make people act to avoid those risks and look for solutions.
FREE and Discounted Offers, More Sales
For a long time, the word “FREE!” has been used in ads to sell products and services, and it has been an effective strategy so far. Neuroscientists have discovered tagging offers as “FREE” triggers strong impulses in the brain’s pleasure centers. This, in effect, spurs consumers to make more emotional, irrational purchasing decisions. Related power words like discount, save and sale also employ this same principle.
Neuro-optimized Website Design, Higher Visitor Retention
Research with eye-tracking technology showed that visitors usually view web pages in a seemingly F-shaped pattern. Heat maps of website designs show viewers quickly scan down the left side of the page at the top, and to the right as they scroll down. Similar studies depict this as a triangular pattern, widest at the top, getting narrower at the bottom left of the screen.
Armed with this fact, neuro web designers can strategically place important content, offers, links and buttons on web pages for maximum attention and ultimately, increase conversion.
Other important neuromarketing techniques include choosing the right font for your marketing campaigns. Simple, sans-serif fonts have been proven to have immediate impact on the viewer while complex fonts take longer to grasp but the information is also retained for longer.
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