Does the word neuromarketing remind you of something? If not, you will be surprised. Wikipedia tells us that it’s a commercial marketing communication field that applies neuropsychology to marketing research, studying consumers’ sensorimotor, cognitive, and effective response to marketing stimuli. Simply speaking, it’s a combination of marketing and neuroscience. Marketers, entrepreneurs, big brands in eCommerce world use this winning combination and get what they passionately pursue – sales and loyal customers.
This article is not about claiming that neuromarketing is a magic pill. It’s your old friend. And if you want to know how it works in eCommerce, you should do a deeper dive into the subconsciousness of the customer. Also, I advise you to read the book “Buyology” by Martin Lindstrom. It will open your eyes to lots of things in this field.
Become a customer of your own eCommerce store
This is the hardest part: to put yourself in the shoes of the customer and to look at things objectively. Every corner of your eCommerce store should be viewed very critically. If there is a thought that everything is ideal – just ask other people (whom you don’t know personally) and they may tell you the very opposite. That’s why we hire different people to solve our business tasks: marketers, sales managers, copywriters, email marketing managers. But even if we hire them, where is the guarantee that they know how to approach the target audience? Lately, people talk about emotional intelligence as one of the key factors of a good employee. In other words, you should search for an empath: a person who can understand the emotions and feelings of other people. Such person might be a real treasure in your team if he combines this ability with certain professional skills and necessary experience.
Of course, this is an ideal vision of a situation. If you want to have an empath in your team, test the candidates on the emotional intelligence.
Remember what the cognitive bias is? It’s such a stubborn psychological aspect which makes us view things in the background of our own experience (both physical and mental). It’s the combination of all our prejudices and stereotypes. And this very thing prevents us from looking at things objectively, as a neutral observer. That’s why it’s quite hard to instantly accept someone else’s experience and emotions. You may think: “How can I understand it if I haven’t experienced it myself?”. Only empathy allows having this flexibility as it may instantly absorb the entirely new experience and draw the necessary conclusions from a certain situation. So we may easily call it an opposition to the cognitive bias.
Forget about personal advantage when “talking” to your customer
When we try to create a decent text for the customer (on the website, in our ads, in emails), we always make one and the same mistake. We sell. We praise our companies, our products, services. Imagine the customer’s face when he sees such content. He thinks: “Well, that’s great. So what?”. Where is the customer’s benefit? To cut the story short, if all this sounds too familiar to you, let’s make a global revision of your content:
- Do not make emphasis only on the features of the product. Describe, how exactly the product solves the customer’s problem and makes his life easier. Every person has certain pains and it’s obvious that there is a wish to get rid of them as soon as possible. Let’s imagine that you are selling a facial lotion. When you enumerated the key ingredients, it’s high time to appeal to emotions. Tell the customer that this solution will make him forget about skin disadvantages. No more pimples, no more foundations and sense of discomfort. Clean skin means confidence.
- Social instinct. It “wakes up” when we see: a considerable number of positive reviews, awards, mentions on some authoritative resources, the number of subscribers, large brands among clients. Surely some customers do not believe that certain trust badges are real and that the reviews are authentic. And it’s not surprising, because there are people who take advantage of such things.
P.S. – we are all human beings. We have rational thinking and emotional thinking. Appeal to both of them and the attention is yours.
What’s the catch? The thing is that our brain doesn’t like to overload itself with too much information. That’s why it creates patterns. Maybe you won’t be enormously happy to hear this, but one of those patterns is imitating the behavior of other people. Thank you, mirror neurons! Sometimes we do not want to copy someone’s behavior but it happens automatically. So, never underestimate the social instinct and use it wisely.
Does the customer make steps according to your scenario?
The fatal mistakes in business are made in the very beginning. One of such mistakes is building an improper route for customers on the eCommerce store. Imagine that you visit the online store for the first time. If you are a customer, everything you need is to buy something quickly, easily without spending too much time and mental efforts on it. If you are an entrepreneur, you want this very customer to become a loyal client. How to make this happen?
- Ideal situation: you or your super skilled marketer together with a designer create a decent website navigation. This is a background of success. If the mission is achieved, the eCommerce site visitors complete the desired actions – they make purchases and come back for more. The bounce rate is incredibly low, but what is MORE important: you have a customer who knows the value of your product/service perfectly. To increase the number of such people, you need to follow a complex approach and connect certain communication channels: social networks, email marketing, platforms for promo activities, landing pages for advertising and certain offline activities. The eCommerce store is the major platform in this system. If the platform is bad, all other activities are useless.
P.S. – The website can be perfectly designed, have good products or services, but if the navigation is improper, the content doesn’t appeal to the customer, all in vain.
The well-proven formula for attracting customers
Something new is well-forgotten old. The same applies to certain marketing fundamentals. Usually when people nowadays start claiming that something is mega working and brand new, in reality, was discovered and tested long ago. One of such things is AIDA model (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action). The principles are simple. They are based on the elementary human behavior. Everyone who wants to generate interesting and EFFECTIVE content should know this model, as it makes the customer perform the desired action. If people write for the sake of writing, (you know, for the sake of appearance) or thinking that the brilliant experience of some sort will help to influence the customer, that’s sad. Do not allow people with such attitude influence your business.
This model is applied everywhere when you communicate with the customer:
- Offline activities (including advertising materials)
- Communication through all digital channels (content, banners, video)
- Telephone sales
- Personal meetings
P.S. – the steps of the AIDA model should be strictly observed. That’s the whole point! When you combine the ideal knowledge of your target audience with this very model the success is guaranteed.
There is one important thing we should always keep in mind. We live in the era of infoglut. The customers are surrounded by advertisements and even already immune to the majority of them. You really don’t want your ads to be among all other unnoticeable stuff, right? Generate unique, courageous ideas and show them in your content and visual materials.
There are certain factors the customer’s interest depends on:
- Your ability to persuade using the strongest areas of your business (you remember all of them, right? If you have a marketing team, they should have a document with all of the strongest areas and use it in their marketing activities). Don’t forget, numbers matter.
- Your ability to show things in the most favorable light. Sometimes it happens that you have a great product or service and you have strong arguments to attract the potential customers. But you don’t know how to show it. It’s a design issue. There should be the one, who will wrap the content into a fancy cover. Words lose their sense when combined with low-quality design. The customer’s trust in such cases is lost momentarily. This is psychology, the number of prejudices and there is nothing you can do with that. So, high-quality design is a must. No interest – no desire to go further.
Desire. It depends on how quickly and effectively you can solve the client’s problem and make his life better. If he understands that this is a long process and someone can do it better, you’ve lost. A good old method is scarcity+exclusiveness. Let’s imagine that you have an exclusive item, thousands of people have bought it and there are two days left before the promo offer ends. This method can be used in all promo activities. Scarcity always helps people to make a decision about the purchase faster.
Value. You know pretty well that people do not value things they receive for free. To avoid this, show that the price of the product was much higher two days ago or there is a very valuable additional bonus.
When you do this (during the first interaction with the customer), show that your loyal customers have the privilege to get only the best offers and are constantly pampered. Every human being adores rewards. By the way, you will be twice a winner if you decide to make a small contest (online and offline) for your customers. It’s called gamification. You just need a good scenario and a decent award for the winners. Doing this, you will:
a) increase sales
b) get more loyal customers
c) increase brand awareness
d) you need more?! Look down
e) new customers
Now you hold all the aces. Whether you have learned something new for yourself or refreshed certain things in your memory – both variants are good. So, it’s high time to apply things in practice. I wish you numerous victories and prosperity in business.
