The technological bells and whistles of the 21st century won’t help sell your product if your marketing efforts don’t appeal to the primordial brain: That was the gist of internet marketing expert Amy Africa’s luncheon keynote speech at the MeritDirect 11th Annual Co-op last week, in which she gave examples of how to adapt your e-commerce efforts to address the most primitive, and critical, sector of the brain.
Most people are familiar with the left brain/right brain dichotomy. But Africa, drawing on a broad range of scientific studies and her own research, said that for marketers, it’s even more important to consider three disparate sections of the brain:
• the neocortex, or “thinking brain,” in which rests the intellect and rational processes
• the midbrain, whose primary function is processing emotion
• the old—also known as the lizard or reptilian—brain, which is where all decisions are made. As Africa said, “It is the boss.”
Because “the boss” is so primitive, Africa said, you need to bear six things in mind when selling to it:
1) The lizard brain is self-centered. The reptilian brain was developed to protect humans, so that even today it boils down all information to four key elements, known as the Four F’s: food, fight, flight, and—well, let’s call it procreation. All four elements are critical to self-preservation, which is job one for this portion of the brain.
As a result, this sector of the brain thrives on familiarity. It equates familiarity with safety, which is why radical Website redesigns are risky and likely to result in declining conversion rates and sales, Africa said. That’s not to say you should never refresh and hone your site; you should, though, enter into any radical revamps with caution.
2) Obvious contrasts enable the brain to make quick decisions. Primitive man had to decide in a split second whether to flee from the creature rustling in the bushes or to fight it (and hopefully kill it and drag it home for dinner). So the primitive portion of the human brain continues to respond best to contrast. When something “happens”—a pop-up ad appears on a computer screen, say—the brain perceives it as a contrast.
3) The lizard brain predates the development of spoken and written language. As a result, it responds best to visual stimuli. “Because it’s so visual,” Africa said, “it’s not qualified to process written language.” Therefore, images are essential to your Website and other marketing vehicles. “The brain gets so happy when it’s in the visual mode,” Africa said. “It’s all Zen and rainbows.”
4) The lizard brain reacts to beginnings and ends. That’s why, as Africa pointed out, you probably remember your first kiss and your last kiss, but not every kiss in between.
It’s also why the positioning of products on a Web page is more important than anything else, she added. “You have to make sure that the first item is the one you want to sell the most.”
5) The lizard brain prefers tangibles to intangibles. This is the reasoning behind “One in the hand (tangible) is worth two in the bush (intangible).” “For the brain, the fear of loss is way more important than the possibility of gain,” Africa said. So when offering products with options, such as computers or cars, you’re better of showing the item bundled with several potential add-ons. Relatively few people will opt to remove these add-ons—in other words, to lose what they already see—even when they could save money by doing so.
This also ties in to why the brain responds to “invoked scarcity.” Given the choice between selecting a cookie from a nearly empty jar and a cookie from a full jar, Africa said, most people would take a cookie from the almost empty jar, for fear of losing out on what others apparently already have. In marketing terms, this explains the success of tagging items with labels such as “Only two left” and “Deal of the day.”
6) For the lizard brain, emotion trumps intellect. One such emotion is anticipation, which leads the brain to generate dopamine, a chemical that produces a high. To encourage that high among your shoppers, be sure to send them messages regarding stock status: when products are in stock, when they are being shipped from the warehouse, approximately when customers can expect to receive their orders.
Allowing emotion to get the better of intellect can backfire, however, when it comes to how you make decisions regarding your online marketing efforts. A Website that we know will effectively communicate with the reptilian brain isn’t necessarily going to be a pretty, splashy, au courant affair, which is what we want. Or as Africa said, “We let our egos get in the way of our Websites.”
