Week 6 — Neuromarketing Review
I’m now halfway through my course and still enjoying it though workwise my career is taking a slightly different direction. More to follow in the coming weeks. This week we are continuing our journey with some more information about Neuromarketing. I’m still finding the course very enjoyable though it took me a little while to warm up to the current presenter.
Some neuroscientists say that 70% of all decisions are made unconsciously. It is the case that 100% of the signal that passes through the “old brain”. There are elements of repetition, through it is said that repetition is the mother of skill this apples to the left and right side of the brain which is also knowns as the rational and emotional left sides of the brain.
Morys goes on to describe implicit codes and although he used the example of BMW, the example I would prefer to use is of the yoga teacher Ben Sears https://www.benjaminsears.yoga/. If you look at this site for only five minutes you will pick up various things and because I don’t want to use a spoiler here, I’ll put my own first impressions in at the end of this article as a footnote1. You can do this with any website but it must be shown for only five minutes and you can ask lots of different people to get their reactions.
Control the Attention
As high as 90% of AB tests fail though there are ways of preventing this form being so high. It is said that customer experience leads to growth it has to be relevant and has to have what is known as emotional resonance. Morys uses an interesting looking Limbic Map, which is a collection of values or motivations which are contained in an oval shape. The Limbic map is shown as an ellipsis shape with three sections. Adventure Thrill, Discipline Control and Fantasy Pleasure. It looks at values including courage, efficiency and trust.
He also tries another experiment using us as the reader as an example. Using eye tracking software Morys looks at how people interact with Lego bricks and there is a heat map of how their eyes interact with an image.
When Morys shows us as the viewer a website for only 50 milliseconds I at least could only pick up the image of a man with lots of data on the left-hand side. It turned out that the website was for Hugo Boss which is one of the brands I really like and even from the snapshot I knew that it was a male luxury brand. We can also pick up colours and known that black is an implicit code for dominance.
I love the branding aspect of marketing and I think that black as a representation of dominance is an interesting item to pick up on. I still think that it is subjective because whilst Morys described the model as unfriendly I don’t agree. I think that the model had a rather gentle face albeit with the classically chiselled features one has come to associate with models. Although I don’t know if this is done on purpose the model also has a Mona Lisa style smile.
The message behind this module is useful. That we may have a message and know 100% what we want to say but customers will perceive 20% information and interpret only 5%. Morys used a term, which I hadn’t heard for a while but it is a great time and it’s “delta, which is a variation of a variable or function.
We can control attention by allowing for space on a website and directional cues as discussed before. A great way of grabbing someone’s attention is to use the person’s name. There are 7 main principles to help to control attention and these are as follows:
1. People / focus
2. Names
3. Directional cues
4. Breaking the cues — such as when something is out of order on the page (four arrows pointing up and one pointing down)
5. Contrast
6. Space
7. Movement
There is a diagram that’s with this where the stimulus goes through the brain to create an outcome which is knowns as the SOR paradigm, which is as follows:
S — Stimulus which leads to
O — The brain as the organism, which leads to
R — The Reaction though also the ‘Return on Investment’ for marketeers
Andre Morys also touches on wireframes where we can mark up the most important information. This is actually an important aspect of copywriting and a great skill to learn.
Emotional Response
This is about what we should say to resonate more with visitors to our website. This is such an important area of persuasion marketing because it looks at our interaction with our audience and how we ca gain more of a rapport with them.
Morys describes resonance as a concept that is really fragile. If we look at it in terms of physics, we can compare with a swing that when pushed moves. It doesn’t require a lot of force. We can also apply this to personalities. Morys looked at a few personas and saw whether the information was too broad. This reminds me of my favourite yoga teachers who are as mentioned earlier
Benjamin Sears what I love about them is his down to earth style and creativity in creating a yoga class. I also love how he teams up with his partner to produce online classes where you can see the positions in two different views, head on and sideways.
Tara Stiles is a former dancer with a very calm personality, who is classically trained as a ballet teacher, she has a very wholesome nurturing personality, which comes across in her teaching and;
Celest Pereira is a former physiotherapist turned yoga teacher who has a lively, bubbly personality. She is also humourous and very warm.
Other information about personas can be found here.
There are various indicators of personality but if these can be turned into core values this is how we create a more emotional focus when we see different indicators that show one kind of person this can be considered a harmonizer.
The repetition comes in really handy here because I am still getting my head around what it means to be heuristic and it is a mental short cut that allows people to solve problems and make judgements quickly and efficiently.
So, when we look at any personality, we can explore what they do want their emotional Motivation and what they don’t want, which is their Emotional Objection. Morys looks at how when we are aware of this information, we can look at a search page for the words that would resonate with this person.
This was tested to show that if you optimize copy or text you will get 50% improvement on results. Morys research also showed that if you change the copy of your landing page and ask you can change the type of customer you attract.
Next week in Week 7 we will continue our neuromarketing journey looking at how first impressions count and the core principles to implement. I’ve admittedly just remembered that I’ve only covered 6 out of the 22 modules so I will be covering more modules in the future blogs and you’ll know where I am in the course as well.
Footnote:
1. Some of the things you might have spotted about the website as follows:
a. The picture of the teacher in an advanced position.
b. The banner at the top which lets the reader know that over $13,000 has been raised for charity since COVID
c. The promotion for the VIBRANT VISION 30 HR TRAINING — Jan 9–30~
d. The box for the mailing list letting readers know what they can receive complete with a promise that the sender won’t send June
e. The main sections of the website including trainings, private sessions, retreats, press and contact
f. At the bottom you start to see a couple pose of Ben and his partner with the words Vibrant Vision
g. The main colours of the website, which are grey, black and brown. Brown on a website can signify something that is earthy and Ben is very down to earth.
h. The name of the website Ben Sears Yoga, which is also in capital letters for more definition.
i. And so on, you may spot other things though I’ll leave it here.
