Lessons From Neuromarketing: A Review
Lessons From Neuromarketing, and Your 3 Brains?
Your 3 brains? Well, you don’t really have those three brains. It’s just that the neuroscientists tell us that there are three layers in the brain. And each layer functions individually, hence the three brains idea.
This is how the brain is segmented:
- new brain – thinks
- middle brain – feels
- old brain – decides
From what I have gathered from the neuromarketing lessons, apparently, the old brain is the process controller. It receives input from the other two brains and controls the deciding factor.
This is according to the CXL neuromarketing course under people and psychology.
”…the old brain is wired to pay attention to disruptions or changes” such as before/after, risky/safe, with/without, and fast/slow. Therefore, to get the old brain’s attention, create contrast and avoid things like neutral statements that dull contrast.“
Excerpt From the book Neuromarketing as quoted in the CXL lesson
Alright now, let’s get back to your three brains, sorry your three brain layers. I know I am learning. But what I can’t figure out is why ‘new brain’ and ‘old brain’. I think there must be a clearer explanation.
It is also believed that the old brain’s responsibility is to release all of your decisions. Can you imagine that? And yet not only is it old, but it is also the most ancient. I suppose the older the wiser!
This is serious stuff. And we have to learn this to effectively market? Phew!
Anyway, I think the folks at CXL Institute need to clarify why the new brain stays new and does not get old! The old remains old and does not get older. How come? What makes one new and the other old. I can understand the middle one. It’s not decided either way I suppose.
Maybe let’s leave that thought to neuroscience and focus on the benefits that digital marketing and conversion optimization derive from neuromarketing.
It gets even harder. Apparently, your brain is dominated by a primitive part. Are you a marketer and you want to convert traffic and sell more stuff or increase service sales? You must get to know your primitive brain. And you thought you were modern!
But hey hang on. There’s more here for you to learn. Do you know that your main primitive brain has not moved much from it’s concerns? It still craves these three things:
- Food
- Fight or Flight
- Fornication
I am not so sure about that last one. Can it be true? Really? Apparently, yes. It must be hidden in most people I think, especially me. Let’s not dwell too much on that or else we fall into it.
Now let me turn to another aspect of this neuroscience lesson. I learned that six stimuli can trigger the old brain into action. Let’s take a look at these stimuli.
Self Centered
Robert Ornstein, a neuroscientist tells us that the old brain is selfish. Why? because it is the one that handles survival and is concerned about its survival, hence the selfishness. The self-centeredness.
You know about the, “what’s in it for me”, thinking? Yeah. It comes from this selfishness. So if you are going to sell more, you must appeal to your site visitors’ selfish desires. Next …
Contrast
Have you heard about the old frog folklore? I mean how to kill a frog without it realising that it’s dying? Don’t put the frog in hot water directly. It will jump out screaming, “murder!”
Instead put it in lukewarm water and make it feel good and comfy. Now slowly turn up the heat on the water. The frog will continue to cooperate. Before long the frog will be dead in that hot water because there’s no contrast.
Wow! This sounds like a cookery session! But please be kind to animals.
The frog illustration sounds like a neuromarketing sales funnel. Warm-up your prospects. Show them that you care for them. Show them the before and after results of your product or service. And they will be sold. Very clever. Let’s move to the next stimuli…
Tangible
You know, how you string together words will either bring in the money or you will leave lots of it on the table, as the saying goes. Take a look at this statement here from the masters of optimization.
At CXL we could have said that “we leverage opportunities to increase shareholder value” or “we perform state-of-the art marketing optimization to improve your bottom line”. In the end, what we do is about making more money. So we chose a simple message instead that has served us well. There’s not much confusion about what we do, I’ll tell you that.
CXL.COM
Bottom line? “We will make you more money”. Period. That’s what it’s all about, right? Remember it’s about getting the old brain to cooperate. This is huge. I am slowly beginning to understand this neuromarketing stuff.
Your old brain doesn’t like beating about the bush. Get to the point to avoid unnecessary thinking delays. Remember the old self-centered brain? Appeal to it. That’s what that CXL statement up there is saying.
The First and Last
This sounds like a verse taken straight from my big book.
When a change takes place, the old brain gets triggered into action. It goes into high alert looking out for any danger signs usually at the beginning and at the end of an interaction.
What I have picked up from this learning is that this has a potential implication in your web design and content presentation. So the start and end of the web copy, videos or such like presentations is critical to the site visitors.
Even though it’s an old brain it get’s captured and fascinated by novelty. So understand this and make use of it.
Visual
Here’s another old brain illustration taken directly from the neuromarketing lesson.
…If you see a snake, the Old Brain will take only 2 milliseconds before it orders you to back away. Yet it will take your visual cortex (the part of the brain that processes visual data) 500 milliseconds to recognize it is actually a snake: so you had moved away almost instinctively without yet even knowing what you had seen.
cxl institute
What happened here? It’s because the optical nerve is connected directly to the old brain and is 25 times faster than the auditory nerve.
Advantage? My take away is that you must always use images with text to emphasize the message. Screenshots are huge messages in the case of e-books or software.
Emotions
Emotion easily triggers the old brain. Here’s a formula to achieve this.
- Address the pain: Identify the pain and deal with it before you begin sales talk.
- Differentiate the claims: Your brain is built to notice contrast or difference. So how different are you from your competitors? Bring this out to the prospect.
- Show proof of claims: Do you have convincing proof? This is where testimonials come in huge. Show proof.
Conclusion
In the end, I can only say that the neuromarketing lesson has been invaluable. There are many things I have learned about this subject which I took for granted.
If I am going to succeed in digital marketing this topic is among the crucial ones to learn more about. I will pick up the supplemental reading as well to round this study off.
I would encourage other marketers to actually get to CXL Institute and get to learn these seeming tongue-twisting but interesting subjects.
Now that I have learned some more on conversion and optimization, let me help you with your project. Let’s Talk.