If it were possible to go back in time and tell our great-great-grandparents that our generation has found water on Mars and that a 4-year-old in Brazil can communicate, through video, with his mother who is traveling on business in France, they would surely think that we are crazy.
But times change at a fast pace and the impacts are perceived everywhere. And to follow the ever-changing environment that we are immersed in, our mind has to change as well.
To know what and how people think is a valuable asset in the Media, Marketing and Communication Industry. That’s why neuromarketing is such an important subject among professionals in these fields.
But what is neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing is the fusion of neuroscience and marketing aimed to investigate consumer behavior, in order to understand what makes them prefer one brand or product over another, or even become a loyal customer.
Neuromarketing is a science concerned with studying, from the point of view of neurology, the unconscious psychological mechanisms that can generate the impulse to purchase a product or a service.
In short, this field of study expresses the idea that the brain acts unconsciously (by chemical reactions) and through internal and/or external stimuli (sensations, emotions, advertisements, colors) that we make a decision about something and behave in a certain way.
And what does it have to do with digital media?
If we look at the scenario from a perspective that digital media channels are highly influential and can affect the decisions people make on a daily basis… it has everything to do with neuromarketing!
Bellow, I’m going to outline three situations where neuromarketing and digital media correlate:
Power of colors
Even before neuromarketing, this has always been an important part of marketing and sales strategies. The good thing is, with this new field of knowledge, not only has the mystery been revealed, but there are now even specialized advertising guides for color palette creation to attract customers, and it also applies to the digital world.
This is because colors are able to evoke emotions and allow the establishment of immediate ties between the person and the representation of a brand or product. This means that the color of your company logo, the dominant colors in your website and even the type of filter you use on Instagram can affect (positively or negatively) the way people feel and react.
Less is more
Too many choices? The harder the decision-making process.
Studies of consumer behavior indicate that if you show too much information or offer too many products at once, people can feel overwhelmed and therefore “paralyzed”, suffocated by so many possibilities. As Bauhaus artists said, “less is more”.
This means that, if you are creating your digital presence (website or social media, for example), or have an e-commerce, you should be concerned about offering the right amount of content and/or items to your audience/consumers. Naturally, it will vary – since it depends on your public profile and the industry you are in – but after a few tests, you should be able to find the perfect balance.
Inbound Marketing
Speaking about content, Inbound Marketing strategies can be used to captivate people’s attention. If you are blogging, there are some tricks you can use to trigger the audience’s brain, such as asking questions, make a list or using phrases such as “the ultimate guide to…”. However, they will only be truly “enchanted” if the content is, indeed, relevant (and preferably exclusive).
So, are you going to start applying neuromarketing science to your digital media strategies?
Just read through your blog post and really like your explanations about neuromarketing. As I was doing some research on neuromarketing at my home university, I am also quite concerned about the drawbacks of this approach.
Thinking about ethics, I am asking myself if this subconscious method is justifiable. Doesn’t it touch our free will? I think it is a thin line between justifiable methods to influence consumers and unethical manipulation.
I do like the way how you structure your article, smoothly transiting from opening the scenario constructing, introduction to new ideas and drawing the correlation of these two ideas. The well-constructed article makes me easy to follow and read through. Besides, Instead of making judgement about neuromarketing, your ‘introducing’ new ideas seems neutral and interesting without the interfering of subjective comments.
But Just for clarification. Do all the neuro-marketing strategies being applied on digital media share the same traits you mentioned? Or maybe these are just general rules but some counter-examples also exist? If it is the case, how do these counter examples still succeed without the advantages you mentioned in the article?
Its really interesting to read about how marketers influence our behaviours in practice, and not just read about what it does to us. I’m kind of curious, is it true that the blue colour that so many social media platforms use blue because it keeps our mind active