How Neuromarketing Works: 5 Neuromarketing Techniques

Neuromarketing applies neuroscience to marketing and advertising, allowing companies to measure customer engagement, consumer behavior, and consumer decision-making processes through science. Neuroscientific data can help a company accurately assess its consumer base’s response to branding, demographics, advertising, and pricing. The data from neuromarketing research can also help marketers craft an effective marketing strategy.

Consumer neuroscience eliminates some of the obstacles of traditional consumer research, like bias. Neuromarketers use scientific research methodologies like brain imaging, and track physiological responses like eye movement, facial expressions, and heart rate, all of which are used to measure a customer’s engagement and emotional responses.

Focus groups and traditional marketing research carries research obstacles—like response bias, self-assessment bias, and research bias—which neuroscientific research solves. Neuromarketing gives you a clear, unfiltered portrait of your customers’ preferences by gathering consumer data beyond any consciously-reported responses.

For example, the information from neuroimaging techniques like fMRI scans (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and EEG scans (electroencephalography) provide insight into your customer’s engagement and interest in a product or messaging. Physiological tests like eye tracking, facial responses, and measuring heart rate can also show emotional engagement and response. This information can be used to isolate the passion points of your demographic, which can aid in advertising, targeting, and your marketing efforts.

Traditional marketing research relies on self-reported responses from test subjects, with biases potentially influencing your customer’s responses. Neuroscience lessens the potential for these biases to impact your research and data collection. There are three main biases that can influence the results of traditional marketing research:

• Response bias: Response bias is when a customer’s test response is influenced by the circumstances of the research set-up, including their reaction to the interviewer, the environment they’re in, or the desire to be a “good” test subject.
• Self-assessment bias: Self-assessment bias is when a customer is ambivalent about their own response or emotional state within a test, which can affect the accuracy of their recorded response. This means that your customer’s response to a product may not be as clear as what a brain scan or physiological response may reveal.
• Researcher bias: The researchers proctoring a focus group carry their own subjective biases into any sort of marketing test, which can influence the way they report the data. Neuromarketing cuts out the influence of a potentially-biased researcher.

Neuroscientists use several different neurological and physiological research methods and techniques to measure customer responses, which include:

1. 1. Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI): An fMRI is a brain imaging technique that uses magnetic fields to track blood flow through the brain. You can track a customer’s detailed neural responses, recall, and level of engagement with an fMRI.
2. 2. Electroencephalography (EEG): An EEG is a brain imaging technique that measures neural activity through electrodes placed on the scalp. You can track customer engagement and brain activity very quickly, over the course of seconds, through an EEG.
3. 3. Eye tracking: The eye's fixation points measure attention through eye movement, while pupil dilation measures a customer’s arousal. This can be used to measure engagement and attention.
4. 4. Tracking facial expressions: Tracking micro-changes in facial expressions can provide insight into a customer’s emotional response.
5. 5. Monitoring heart rate: An increase in heart rate demonstrates increased arousal in your customer.

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