As Digital Marketers, we’re often focused on predictions: What’s are the newest trends for the year? Where’s the market moving? Where should we focus our marketing spend?
Maybe we, as Digital Marketers, should be focused on something deeper: Why do we choose one brand over another? How do people make buying decisions? What motivates us to click a buy button online? Do we really have power over what we buy?
Trends have been my focus since 2005 and will always be. Recently, I discussed the top 2017 digital marketing trends and back in 2008, I covered a new trend for Community Marketing which was “Blogs”, but I still can’t help but feel that something is missing from today’s Digital Marketing strategies.
After a recent discussion with a fellow Digital Marketer, Stevan George, we began discussing how the brain works when it comes to making decisions, purchases in-store/online, and how Digital Marketing is falling behind. We know that mobile is here to stay, yet we’re relying on old Marketing tactics to be successful. We must evolve with consumers and people.
Per Stevan’s recommendation, over the course of the next few weeks, I will be dissecting every word, paragraph, and concept from Douglas Van Praet’s “Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (And Inspire) Marketing,” in hope of discovering how to evolve Digital Marketing with people (no consumers).
My thoughts and highlights from my readings will be noted here in a series of posts over the course of the next few months:
- Introduction (below)
- The Unconscious Myths of Digital Marketing
- Humanizing Digital Marketing with Neuromarketing
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INTRODUCTION Notes from Unconscious Branding
Immediately, the idea of humanizing Digital Marketing is evident as the key to understanding the impact neuroscience can have. What’s most intriguing is consumers are not in charge of their brand choices because that would assume they’re aware of their decisions, but that’s actually not the case. Surprisingly, we live our lives in autopilot, but just don’t know it.
“90% of our brain activity never reaches consciousness at all” – Chris Frith, Leading Neuropsychologists
“As much as 95% of consumers’ thinking occurs in their unconscious minds” – Gerald Zaltman, Harvard Marketing Professor
The truth is, we make most of our decisions unconsciously. As you walk into a store or shop online, you’re unconsciously making a decision to buy based on brand, product, technology, etc. Brand loyalty is not something that is based on a tagline, price, or even placement (sorry to the 4 P’s of Marketing), but rather brand loyalty is derived from a “trigger within a deep and neurological process of behavior.”
As Digital Marketers, our focus should be on the “how”: how do the minds of people (not consumers) process information, structure their brand experience, and form unconscious beliefs? what are the motivations that drive that behavior?
Perhaps these focus points should be included as we look at Digital Marketing trends for the year. If the majority of buyer decisions are made unconsciously, how can Digital Marketing make conscious decisions about the unconscious human side of Marketing? That’s the biggest question of the year.