Digital Neuromarketing

The Psychology Of Persuasion In The Digital Age

Sam Page

• Publisher: NeuroTriggers
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9780994390233
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Marketing Research
• Index: Business

Marketing is psychology, in practice. That’s all it is.

This book will introduce you to fascinating research in the areas of social psychology and consumer behavior. But more importantly, this book will show you exactly how you can apply these research findings to acquire more customers for your business.

Focused specifically on digital marketing strategies, Digital Neuromarketing is packed full of examples and screenshots from some of the world’s most successful online companies.

The purpose of this book is to eliminate the guesswork for you. To equip you with insights that facilitate a far greater, and much more predictable return for every dollar you spend on digital advertising.

Sam Page is a nationally registered consumer psychologist. He is also the #1 International Best Selling author of Going Up: Proven Strategies for Reaching Higher Levels in Business, and Unconscious Marketing: 25 Cognitive Biases That Compel Your Customers To Buy (Without Them Knowing).

Sam is the founder of NeuroTriggers Agency, the world’s only full service neuromarketing firm.

C H A P T E R 1

MARKETING PSYCHOLOGY

The human brain is incredibly complex, and there’s a lot we still don’t know about it. When it comes to understanding how and why people make the decisions they make, researchers have just begun to scratch the surface. However, we are learning more every day about what makes people tick. While many of the applications of the ongoing research on the human brain relate to medicine, marketing researchers in the field of neuromarketing are making great use of psychology to make marketing campaigns more scientific – and more effective – than ever.

If you think about it, it makes sense. All marketing has the same goal – to get customers to make a decision in favor of a particular company or product. Understanding the decision-making process is absolutely essential, then, if you want to lead customers to a particular decision as quickly and efficiently as possible. As you might expect when talking about psychology, understanding has to begin with an examination of the human brain and how it works.

Beginning with the Brain

One of the most important things to understand – something that is the foundation of many of the principles of marketing psychology – is that human beings have what researcher Paul D. MacLean terms a triune brain.⁹ That means that we have three different brains in one. Let’s talk about what that means.

If you have even a rudimentary knowledge of Darwinism, you know that the human brain is the product of millions of years of evolution. All life on earth started in the sea, and we evolved over a long period. Some of the earliest creatures on earth were reptiles, and it turns out we still have something in common with them.

The first and most primitive part of our brains is called the reptilian brain. The scientific name for it is the basal ganglia, and it’s the part of the brain that governs basic survival. It’s the home of our fight-or-flight response – the thing that keeps animals alive in a life-or-death situation. According to Patrick Renvoise and Christophe Morin PhD in their book, “Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer’s Brain“, this part of the brain, also called the old brain, actually plays a critical role in the decision-making process¹⁰. The reptilian brain is highly visual, and largely governed by fear.

The second part of the brain is the mammalian, or middle brain. This brain is also known as the limbic system, and it includes the septum, amygdala, hypothalamus, hippocampus, and cingulate cortex. This is the part of the brain that deals with our feelings, hormones, and moods. It also plays a significant role in decision making.

The third and final part of the brain is the most evolved part of the brain, the part that’s responsible for rational thought and logic. It’s called the human, or new, brain – the scientific name for it is the neocortex. It’s also the place where our language skills and conscious thoughts live. We have a tendency to think that this is the part of our brain that makes decisions because it’s the part that’s capable of evaluating a product’s features or price.

Influencing the Old Brain

All three of these brains coexist inside our heads, and research tells us that the key to influence resides in the reptilian brain.¹¹ Unless its fears and objections can be overcome, a customer is not going to take action and make a purchase. Once it moves from the reptilian brain, the decision still has to get past our emotions and moods before it can be addressed by the new brain.

Let’s look at one way online marketers can overcome customer fear. Now, when you think of fear, you might be thinking of big things, true life-or-death situations like a plane crashing or a building burning. When it comes to human decision-making, though, fear is sometimes a lot smaller than that. For example, any purchase could be viewed as a risk because it involves a customer handing over money in return for an as-yet-untested product or service.

That basic fear is the reason you so often see marketing campaigns that offer subtle reassurances and guarantees. Look at this page from Defence Bank, and see how it works to alleviate customers’ fears:

Note the two things I’ve outlined in green. The first is a display of three trust markers – symbols indicating awards the bank has won. The second is a comparison rate, which gives prospective customers a way to know what the total cost of their loan will be when they take all of the associated fees and charges into consideration. There’s also an offer to enter a contest to win $10,000. The chances of any one customer winning are undoubtedly small, but the chance of winning something makes it easier for this web page to overcome fear and get customers to take the next step.

According to Renvoisé and Morin, the old brain can only be triggered by six stimuli¹²:

1 Self-centered

Robert Ornstein is a famous neuroscientist who stated that the old brain is the one that is in survival mode, so surviving is its only concern. In that regard, the old brain is very selfish.

With that said, it’s important that the message you deliver is acceptable to the old brain of your customers. This means your message should be about your customers, not your products or services. They want to know you’re on their side and that you care about their issues. Every visitor asks “what’s in it for me?” This is because they care for themselves and their family.

Visitors to your website don’t care about you, so don’t waste words talking about yourself. Make it solely about the customer and what benefits you can offer them.

2 Contrast

The brain is attracted to things that are in contrast with each other. For example, things that contrast with something in the environment or previous events are fascinating to the reptilian brain.

The old brain looks for contrasts to make quick decisions and to avoid becoming confused, which happens when decisions are delayed.

Using a before and after photo comparison is a very popular technique, especially in the beauty and fitness industries. It can also be used to showcase a transformation of traffic, conversion rates, wealth, cleanliness, remodeling and so on.

The book, Neuromarketing: Understanding the Buy Buttons in Your Customer’s Brain, states that the old brain is attracted to disruptions or changes. So using contrasts that show before and after, slow and fast, with and without, and risk and safety can help to highlight the features and benefits of your product in a way that appeals directly to the old brain.

To captivate your visitors, try to use contrast as a way to show the promise of your product or service.

3- Tangible

The old brain has a preference for things that are tangible. Promoting things like extra time and energy won’t help you market to the reptilian brain. Instead, a better choice would be to discuss tangible benefits of using your product or service such as earning more money and increasing ROI.

4- Beginnings and Endings

The reptilian brain has a very short attention span, and it tends to do the best job remembering the beginning and end of whatever it hears. That means that when you’re trying to sell to the old brain, it’s important to start with a clear introduction that explains what you’re offering, which is then followed by the body of your presentation and then finished with a conclusion (call to action). Any essential information must be repeated at the end if you want the old brain to remember it.

By ensuring a sequential flow for your content, you will enable your visitors to follow and pay attention easily. When your content is too complex, unclear or disjointed, then you will lose their interest rather quickly.

People are able to pay attention for about 10 minutes at a time, so every ten minutes, make sure you give them something emotionally stimulating to keep their focus.

5 Visual

The reptilian brain responds very quickly to visual stimulation. That doesn’t mean that written content can’t apply to the old brain, but it does mean that compelling visual content is your best tool for selling to the reptilian brain. Consider using photographs, infographics, illustrations and video to appeal to the old brain’s preference for visual learning.

6- Emotion

Different emotions, including sadness, hope, excitement and anger, can be used in marketing to engage a customer and inspire them to take action. Shock is another great method to stimulate emotion. It’s actually one of the oldest tricks in the advertising playbook.

“Emotion drives attention which drives learning.” Robert Sylwester, A Celebration of Neurons (1995)

Your written and visual content should share the same emotion. If you can include emotion in both your images and written content, you can get people’s attention with ease.

Influencing the Middle Brain

Once a web page has managed to satisfy the reptilian brain, it still needs to get past the mammalian brain – the home of emotion. Researcher Timothy D. Wilson of the University of Virginia did a study in 2005 that revealed that people make decisions based on something called affective predictions.¹³ What that means is that they think about the emotional impact a future event – the result of a decision – will have on them, and they base their decision on their predicted emotions. It turns out we have a tendency to underestimate how quickly we’ll recover from emotional impact, but that’s actually something that can work in your favor when it comes to marketing.

The reason we overestimate emotional impact is due to our susceptibility to a cognitive bias – sort of a mental shortcut – called the impact bias. What’s interesting about the impact bias is that it actually works in both directions. We overestimate the impact a decision will have on our future – something that marketers use when they show pictures of satisfied customers like this one:

It might seem simple, but an image like this one enables potential customers to envision themselves as part of that smiling group. In other words, it helps them to predict the impact of using this company’s consulting services in a good way.

If – and only if – your marketing campaign can get past the defense mechanisms of the reptilian brain and the emotional concerns of the mammalian brain, it will finally reach your customer’s neocortex – the new brain. That’s when you can introduce information about pricing and features. If you bombard visitors to your site with that information right away, your page won’t be effective. It’s just that simple.

Avoid Doing these Things

Common mistakes people make that can hinder the old brain’s decision-making process include the following:

• Focusing content on your company or product, rather than on the needs of your target customer -- don’t forget the old brain is self-centered.
• Not giving visito...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Marketing Psychology
• Chapter 2: Conversion Rate Optimization
• Chapter 3: The Psychology of Web Design
• Chapter 4: Persuasive Writing Fundamentals
• Chapter 5: The Psychology of Paid Advertising
• Chapter 6: The Psychology of Social Media Marketing
• Conclusion
• Appendix