In the past, when companies wanted to improve their marketing techniques, they wouldn’t think of using science and especially the field of neuroscience. But the improvements that this field made over the past two decades have transformed our understanding of the brain and how it works. We now know why and how people react to certain adverts or marketing pitches, and for the marketing profession, this information is pure gold. This interaction between neuroscience and marketing led to the emergence of a new field called neuromarketing.
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The objective of neuromarketing is to grab the customer’s attention; and to do so, you must target the old brain. The old brain is your decision-making center so it is important for marketers to appeal to it if they want to increase their sales. But the old brain is 450 million years old while language developed around 10,000 years ago. Thus rational language can’t adequately capture its attention. Instead, there are different techniques for attracting attention
- Prime your material
- Structure your message
- Prepare your presentation
- Handle customer objections
- Be Credible
- Use memorable language
- Communicate with the old brain in job interviews
Priming your material
Before optimizing and delivering your message, you need to prepare. First, you need to diagnose the pain and listen to your customer’s needs. Next, differentiate your claims. Ask yourself: What is special about your product and how will it solve your customer’s pain? Finally, demonstrate the gain and benefits of your product in your customer’s life. You should also add customer’s stories, testimonials, short demonstrations, prototypes, data, personal views, etc.
Structuring your message
After preparing your material, you need to focus on structuring your message in a way that intrigues the old brain. You should use big pictures such as contrast so that potential customers can visualize what your solution does before and after adopting it. Another step is proving gain through statistics for example. You can also add impact boosters like visual, auditory and kinesthetic details. We all remember a song from a tv ad that was always stuck in our heads!
Prepare your presentation
The presentation’s objective is to convince people to consider, and hopefully purchase your product. When presenting, you should grab the audience’s attention by using grabbers such as: mini-dramas focusing on the suffering of your customers then their satisfaction after trying your product, rhetorical questions that get your audience thinking about something specific, hypothetical questions that the old brain can’t help but try to find an answer, and props to make the presentation memorable.
Handle customer objections
Customers tend to show doubt sometimes so in order to handle their objections you must differentiate between misunderstandings and valid objections by rephrasing the objection to understand it more, stepping into the objection, listening to your customer and finally proving your point. To handle objections that have nothing to do with misunderstandings, start with the same steps then add those two: Express your opinion and highlight a positive side of the objection via stories, testimonials, etc.
Be Credible
To make yourself more credible you must: have passion for your product or service, research your audience to find similarities so you can understand them, be ready to change your approach to fit the audience, and finally be fearless.
Use vivid language
Using vivid language and emotional stories will make your message memorable and sticky. Try using sharp contrasts but remember to keep everything short and simple since the attention span of the old brain is short. In addition to words and language, try to elicit emotions and include stories that appeal to the senses and end it with something funny, memorable, or engaging
Communicate with the old brain in job interviews
When you need to convince someone of something, like during a job interview, you can appeal to the old brain. You can achieve that through the same four ways stated above in the first method: First, diagnose the pain and research about your position and the company’s needs as much as you can. Then, you must differentiate your claims and listen to the company’s statements about you and the competition. Next, focus on what you can do for them and demonstrate the gain and benefits. Finally, deliver the message to the old brain from what you have learned in the above methods.
Finally, if you use these techniques your selling pitch is going to be better and you’re going to appeal to different types of people thus increasing your efficiency in sales and marketing. However, you can’t use them all at once; you must determine what technique works best in this certain situation or sitting. For example, if you’re having an interview with customers from a different cultural background, it is required from you to research them and find out about their needs to present yourself as a solution.
