With the right neuromarketing measures, customers can be influenced in a targeted way and motivated to make a purchase. These five tips aim to help you optimise your sales processes:
What is neuromarketing?
Neuromarketing leverages the methods used for brain research and provides insights into processes which take place within customers’ minds while they are taking purchasing decisions. The examinations are generally based on measurements of brain activity as well as other data such as the customer’s pulse rate or sweating activity.
Companies can then use the knowledge gained from this to activate neural processes in a specific direction and thus influence a consumer’s purchasing decision – going beyond just the product’s value for money. After all, the decision for or against a certain company or brand is often not based on rational arguments. Various studies have come to the conclusion that around three-fourths of all purchasing decisions are largely taken subconsciously.
Professionals in the B2B segment also listen to their gut feeling, and don’t just look at the numbers and facts. This was proven, for instance, by the survey Only Human: The Emotional Logic of Business Decisions conducted by the Fortune Knowledge Group. According to the results, the growing amount of information is leading to an ever-higher degree of complexity, which often results in the consumer being overwhelmed. It’s in this moment that B2B decision-makers start to listen to their intuition. Nearly two-thirds of all managers questioned often believe it is necessary to rely on their feeling.
„Professionals in the B2B segment also listen to their gut feeling, and don’t just look at the numbers and facts.“
5 tips for using neuromarketing
The following five tips explain how you can leverage the knowledge gained from neuromarketing to concretely guide your sales activities:
1. Create emotions through storytelling
The aim of any company or brand should first be to create emotions within customers and, in turn, activate specific areas of the brain. Highly emotional brands cause a closer connection and a stronger tie to the respective product. You can achieve this by telling a genuine and emotionally consistent story centred round the brand.
2. Use people images in online shops
Particularly in the B2B segment, many online shops are full of technical product images. When these products are complemented by ambience images featuring people, they generate more attention. This is because the subconscious is focused on faces. When a face looks at you, you look at it. If the person shown is looking towards the product, the customer’s eyes will be guided in the same direction.
3. Select colours carefully
People connect colours with certain emotions and associations. For instance, red, orange and yellow are considered warm colours in our culture and can call up feelings of happiness or stand for optimism and energy. The colour white radiates purity, while black stands for professionalism and luxury. A dark blue conveys the feeling of serenity and reason. However, these same colours often have different meanings in other cultures. Accordingly, certain colours of a website or the colours of a corporate design can trigger emotions which influence the purchasing decision.
4. Design packaging to be attractive
In addition to its function for transport and storage, packaging plays a role as an image and advertising medium for a brand. It is a “silent salesperson” and product ambassador. The packaging should therefore be designed in such a way that is conjures up positive emotions. The design can look differently depending on the target group: the attention of young people can certainly be caught with extraordinary designs more than the older generation. If you are selling your goods online, the look of the packaging is first and foremost important. But also the feel or even the acoustics and odour can generally trigger emotions in customers and influence their purchasing decisions.
5. Communicate customer satisfaction
If customers are satisfied with the product or service, the entrepreneur should communicate this satisfaction on their website in agreement with the customer. Even better is when customers review their buying experience themselves. This is because people like to buy things which others have also bought. Known in neuromarketing as “herding”, this effect is stronger the bigger the group and the more esteemed the persons.
Best Practice Neuromarketing
Launch of a new pump generation at Stübbe
The machine manufacturing company Stübbe from North Rhine-Westphalia manufactures, amongst others, plastic pumps for chemical processes. In collaboration with the brand agency red pepper, which has specialised in neuromarketing, Stübbe GmbH developed a brand campaign to launch a high-quality pump generation in the market which caters to a completely new target group. To grab the attention of these customers, Stübbe moved away from its product-centric marketing strategy to leverage neuromarketing methods.
First, Stübbe worked with red pepper to develop a corporate identity and conceptualise an emotional story to tell around the products: the motives and values at the heart of the company’s philosophy, how such pumps are actually developed, how the work at the company is structured, and how the teamwork with the customer takes place. To achieve this, the agency organised workshops with Stübbe employees in which the company’s vision, for instance, was developed.
Afterwards, the machine manufacturer and the agency developed Stübbe’s brand image based on its corporate identity. The visionary story, which continues to be at the heart of the communications strategy, was boosted to feature the corporate design. The new confidence, the strength and the durability of the products are reflected in it: a powerful font, dark colours, clear accents and an image world which puts the focus on the performance and strength of the products. The trade fair booth, too, was staged in line with the product launch.
The response to the campaign was positive across the board. Contacts were made, sales talks took place and collaborations arose with customers who were never reached before. Employees were invited to talks with experts due to their presumed competence in pump technology. What’s more, Stübbe received a host of proactive applications after the campaign, although the job market in this area is rather sparse.
