Neuromarketing is the fascinating and rapidly developing combination of scientific findings and marketing. As a significant influence on modern marketing techniques, neuromarketing in turn influences consumers and their decisions.
The good news for you as a marketer is that you don’t have to conduct your own neuromarketing research in order to harness its power. All you need is to understand the following principles and facts about the human brain in order to drive higher conversion rates and satisfy customers.
How to convince your customer to make the right buying decision
It all starts with an idea
Neuromarketing as a concept is based on, guess what, memes. While the term commonly describes viral pictures with clever captions, a meme in the general sense is a piece of cultural information, an easily recognisable idea that spreads from person to person within a culture. In marketing, the meme becomes a mnemonic device that connects an idea to a product or brand and places it in cultural context.
The brain is fooled by decoys
A decoy is a standard marketing trick because it’s simple and highly effective. Our brains are wired in a way that if we’re presented with too little options, we place less value on what is available. If there is no competition for an item on the market, it’s hard to convince consumers of its quality. The decoy effect is most commonly used as third choice phenomenon: instead of offering just a standard and premium option, a third one of lesser value (basic) makes the higher price choices more attractive.
We are creatures of habit
Human behavior is shaped by habits: if we are rewarded for doing something, we keep doing it – especially when the reward increases. This exact principle is what makes video games so addictive. They follow a loop in which the player repeats tasks while at the same time progressing through skills and rewards. In much the same way, habits are acquired.
Thinking vs. doing
There is a fundamental difference between why consumers buy things and the reason they give for doing so. 85 percent of new products fail, because they have been based on misleading and unreliable surveys and research. We all have two minds, one for doing and one for thinking. The latter one is slow and can only focus on one task at a time. It 
comes into play when we try to make up our minds about a purchase decision: Do we really need this item? How often will we use it? The doing mind is fast and relates to intuition, the subconscious and sensory stimulation.
The brain wants to take shortcuts
We’re all lazy, and taking a shortcut is very often a smart move because it helps us save time and energy. Our brains follow the same logic, which in turn leads to somewhat irrational but very predictable behavior. We bias our decisions according to the first piece of information we are given. It can be a set high price for a used car which is then bartered down, or a call to action that appeals to a real or perceived need we have.
Memory needs to be aligned
As a marketer, you want consumers to have a positive and strong brand memory that is linked to at least one of their goals or needs. This alignment is crucial, otherwise they remember your marketing, but not the brand. We’ve all seen the phenomenon: Likes, views and shares in large quantities appear to mark a success but don’t translate into a conversion or sales goal. To avoid the pitfall of unaligned memory, make your brand memorable. At all touch points with your target audience, the brand needs to be emotionally engaging and play a central role to be cemented into the memory of customers.
Herd mentality
We are social creatures, and we tend to follow the herd. It’s normal for humans to take a cue from others, and it’s another shortcut the brain takes: group-thinking. The more people are doing something, the better it must be. We are likely to choose what others have chosen or want, no matter when or where: finding an exit, dressing up or buying a car, we follow popular choice.
