Simply put, Neuromarketing uses neuroscience to understand the ‘secrets’ of the human brain so that marketers can tap into the minds of the consumers to better market their products to them. In fact, 95% of a person’s thoughts, emotions and learning occur before we are aware they are happening. (Source:  Neuroscience Marketing, Fast Company)

So the truth is, before that celebrity even opens their mouth to tell you why their weight loss program is working for them, or how their new shampoo is, chances are your brain has already formed opinions on the celebrity, the brand and the products. The real question is, how do you combat something that is seemingly out of your control?

A study conducted by Neurolabs at Neurofocus offers the following insights:

• People prefer images with rounded edges to those with sharp edges.
• People don’t seem to like human images without a head so PLEASE find those mannequin heads and reattach them!
• Men are more apt to listen to the features a product offers, women want a deal (they are more sensitive to price changes)

People may seem like they’re into something but their brain tells a different story. They often don’t emotionally connect with ads even if they find them funny at the time; meaning the ad won’t be remembered after a short amount of time.

Fast Company recently published an article with their tips for better neuromarketing:

• Speak more to how a product will better a consumer’s life, then just why it is a good product
• K.I.S.S. Method – the tried and true method of ‘keeping it simple’ applies here. Short meaningful statements are better than pages of copy any day
• Visualize – people subconsciously connect with pictures and other visually appealing aspects of products/marketing before they read the words to go along with them. Make those visuals as appealing as possible.
• Start Strong, Finish Strong – Our brains pays the most attention to what happens at the beginning and at the end of a pitch, make those your strong points.
• Play on Emotions – tap into how consumers feel, that way any connections created will be more meaningful and deep as opposed to just a surface conversation.

So there you have it, some tips and tricks to make the most of neuromarketing for your business!

Last week, I was attending a book club meeting where we were discussing Eric Ries’ now famous novel: The Lean StartUp. In the book, Ries outlines all of the basic principles that a startup can put in place to achieve measureable success with proper testing and evaluation. The lean principles can merit their own blog post, so I won’t get too detailed today– but the idea of identifying precisely what your consumer wants came up in discussion.

We talked about making sure to listen to the consumer, and really take into perspective what they’re asking for. It was then proposed that the consumer is more likely to provide you with a complaint, or a desire that perhaps has nothing to do with the current product or service they’re using.

Let’s put this into context: back when VHS tapes were in their prime, one of the major gripes was that they took forever to rewind. Traditional thinkers would take this complaint, and try and design a faster VCR – when really, the customers were actually indirectly asking for a DVD player.

This concept (though simple) blew me away. I’ve always considered myself an out the box thinker – but to hear this put into such a simple example really resonated with me. One of the key parts of innovation is being able to hear feedback, and produce products and services that are able to better consumer user experiences. This was done ingeniously by the introduction of the DVD player, but has transcended into many different facets of technology to provide us with some of our now daily necessities.

It’s just a true testament to the fact that the consumer doesn’t always know what they want, but they certainly can identify what they don’t want. It takes great vision and foresight to look beyond the present day products, and create products or services from ground zero.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the late, great Steve Jobs:

“A lot of times, people don’t know what they want until you show it to them.”