Make sense of marketing

Researchers have learned how to map brain activity to improve product development, shopping habits and advertising.

What can you do? Just try playing to their senses.
 

The brain game

Neuromarketing is the term given to the practice of taking our understanding of how our brains work and using that toward improving marketing, sales and advertising. Science can actually measure what parts of the brain are activated based on a given stimulus. A brain mapping medical technology called fMRI (Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) can be used to study blood flow and blood oxygenation in the neuron activity of customers when making a purchase.

Basically, researchers are able to see how different marketing tactics subconsciously affect customers. And because of this kind of research, some rather fun and interesting marketing ideas can be effectively used in garden centers to put consumers in the mindset to browse and buy your products. As a grower, it’s important to learn more about this tactic, find ways to incorporate it into your marketing, and share this information with your retailer customers.
 

Sense and sensibility

The way a garden center looks, smells, and even sounds can have an impact on consumers’ shopping experiences. Product placement is essential.

“What we see, hear, taste, feel and smell all go into our evaluation of an environment or product or an advertisement,” says Roger Dooley, founder of Dooley Direct marketing consultancy and author of Brainfluence.

Studies have shown that using sensory stimuli such as scents can keep shoppers in a browsing mood. This is why some bookstores have coffee shops in them, or some clothing stores have popcorn. These are scents that have been proven to have a positive effect on the customer’s brain activity, and in many cases, increase purchases.

If you sell a line of pleasantly aromatic plants, suggest that your retailer place them along heavily trafficked areas.

Retailers may also add artificial scent to boost the impact of certain displays, like the smell of the ocean near tropicals or the scent of blueberry muffins near edibles. Make sure artificial scents are as close to the natural smell as possible.

“You want it to be relatively close to the same thing so people don’t simply say, ‘Gee, that’s a really lousy air freshener they’re using,’” Dooley says.

Sound can also be a powerful motivator for consumers. Playing relaxing music may help subconsciously slow them down, so they don’t rush past displays. The sounds of birds and the outdoors may put them in a planting mood, getting them excited about their garden and thinking of new ideas. And when they’re in that kind of mood, that’s the perfect time for them to be looking at your plants.

Subliminal audio marketing has shown to even shape the direction of customer purchases. One study in 1997 showed that when either French or German background music was played in a supermarket, it had an effect on the type of wine a consumer purchased. When French music was played, French wine outsold German wine five bottles to one. Conversely, when German music was played, German wine outsold French wine two bottles to one. Coming up with a creative soundtrack to accompany your products may lead customers toward purchasing specific items. Think playing Caribbean music to boost tropical plant sales.

Where items are placed – and what’s near them – can have a subconscious effect on consumers, as well. For items that are in high demand, try placing them toward the middle or back of the store, or next to items that you would like to increase sales. Having customers walk by products twice – on the way there and back – to get to what they’re looking for can entice them to take a second glance at something new.

Using subconscious cues is a great way to not only get customers browsing longer and buying more, but also to keep them happy in their entire experience in the garden center.

To read more about neuromarketing, visit Roger Dooley’s blog at www.neurosciencemarketing.com or pick up his book, “Brainfluence: 100 ways to persuade and convince customers with neuromarketing.”

Ethel Lynn is a marketer and freelance writer in Lakewood, Ohio.

The buyers’ brain

Stephen Genco, Andrew Pohlmann and Peter Steidl of Intuitive Consumer Insights are neuromarketing specialists who wrote “Neuromarketing for Dummies.” In their book the authors explain that neuromarketing is not a new kind of marketing, but a new way to study marketing. They identify six major areas where neuromarketing is being used today:

Branding: Brands are ideas in the mind that draw strength from the connections they make. Neuromarketing provides powerful techniques for measuring brand associations.

Product design and innovation: Neuromarketing can measure consumer responses to product ideas and package designs that are largely automatic, emotional and outside our conscious awareness.

Advertising effectiveness: Much advertising impacts us through nonconscious means, even though we don’t think it does. Neuromarketing explains how.

Shopper decision making: Neuromarketing shows how store environments directly influence how shoppers decide and buy, and it’s not a logical process.

Online experiences: The online world provides new challenges to our old brains. Brain science shows the many ways we can be subtly influenced as we go about our online activities.

Entertainment effectiveness: Entertainment creates experiences in people’s minds that can influence attitudes, preferences, and actions. Neuromarketing shows what happens when entertainment transports us into an imaginary world.
 

The brain and advertising
The traditional model of advertising effectiveness assumes a direct, conscious route from viewing an ad to making a purchase. But advances in brain science have identified an indirect route that takes into account nonconscious processes. The indirect route to advertising effectiveness is meant to influence brand equity by changing brand attitudes, memory and intentions toward the brand. It also allows brand attitudes and associations to impact sales at the point of purchase. In contrast, the traditional direct route to advertising effectiveness communicates a simple and logical argument that persuades consumers to buy a product, either by reinforcing their current preferences or by changing their preferences from a competing product.

According to the authors, using neuromarketing in advertising works best when the product and its category are well established and familiar; when the ad minimizes information and message content and focuses on an emotionally engaging narrative in which the brand plays a central role; and when the product is inexpensive and purchased frequently, so the ad is aimed at building or reinforcing longer-term associations with the brand.

For more: Intuitive Consumer Insights, http://intuitiveconsumer.com.

Neuromarketing For Dummies
Stephen Genco, Andrew Pohlmann, Peter Steidl ISBN: 978-1-118-51858-8